Navigating Issues of Deescalation in India and Pakistan

This research proposal outlines a threefold investigation aimed at understanding and analyzing social media discourse in near-conflict scenarios between India and Pakistan --two countries with a long history of acrimonious past. This research will 1) present a unique curated dataset extracted from social media platforms; 2) investigate the perceptions of people in India and Pakistan towards peace-seeking and war-mongering content, examining their ability to distinguish between deescalation strategies and assessing whether they share similar definitions of deescalation; and 3) explore the influence of extraneous factors,