India Covid-19: AI shows Pakistani Twitter prayed for Neighbor
It is perhaps not surprising that the fractious relationship between historic adversaries India and Pakistan has spilled over into social media in recent years. But at the end of April; as India struggled with a ferocious second wave of Covid-19; citizens on either side of the border shelved their barbs in favour of supportive hashtags like #IndiaNeedsOxygen and #PakistanStandsWithIndia. Furthermore, Experts say it is well known that supportive hashtags do not always mean positive tweets; users often “hijack” them for anything from trolling to wishing happy birthday to a cricketer or Bollywood star.
But artificial intelligence (AI)-a driven study; which looked at thousands of tweets from Pakistan posted between 21 April and 4 May says an overwhelming number were indeed positive. Researchers, led by Ashiqur KhudaBukhsh of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the US; used machine learning tools to identify the tweets that expressed kindness, empathy, and solidarity. Moreover, They collected 300,000 tweets with three biggest trending hashtags; #IndiaNeedsOxygen; #PakistanStandsWithIndia, and #EndiaSaySorryToKashmir – the last reference to the long-running dispute over the Himalayan territory. Of these, 55,712 tweets were from Pakistan, 46,651 were from India and the remaining were from around the world.
“Hope speech classifier” on Pakistan Tweets for India:
Moreover, The researchers then ran the text from these tweets into a “hope speech classifier” – a language processing tool that helps detect positive comments. They looked for patterns to identify if the text had “hostility-diffusing positive hope speech”; or words like prayer, empathy, distress, and solidarity. Delhi’s oxygen crisis deepens as more patients die. Anger rises as Covid rages in Modi’s constituency. Their study found that tweets containing supportive hashtags originating in Pakistan heavily outnumbered those containing non-supportive hashtags and also had substantially more likes and retweets. Furthermore, Their method also amplified the positive tweets; making it easier to find them quickly.
Ya ALLAH Show mercy on people of India. Our prayers and Our sympathies are with you. We are Neighbours not Enemies…🇵🇰🇮🇳#IndiaFightsCOVID19 #IndianLivesMatter #WeCantBreathe#COVID19India #IndiaNeedsOxygen #PakistanstandswithIndia 🇵🇰 pic.twitter.com/6JuT0dZV78
— Fatima Khalil Butt (@iam_FatiMaButt) April 23, 2021
Edhi foundation offers 50 ambulances Ambulance to India
humanity stands first then anything else
are neighbours not enemy`s
India and Pakistan are rivals not opponents
We have boundaries but not in our hearts
We are humans, we have pain Broken heart #PakistanstandswithIndia pic.twitter.com/1uhBbdqX6t— Dr Maria Zaman 🇱🇾 (@BBZKaKashmir) April 23, 2021
Lastly, “Our research showed that there’s a universality in how people express emotions. If you search randomly, you’ll find positive tweets a little over 44% of the time. Furthermore, Our method throws up positive tweets 83% of the time;” Mr. KhudaBukhsh said. In end-April and early May, as Indian hospitals ran out of beds, people died gasping for oxygen and funeral pyres burned round the clock; there was a significant outpouring of support and solidarity from people across the border. One reason could be that the outbreak in Pakistan was also getting serious, says Prof Arifa Zehra, who teaches history in Lahore.
