LAHORE – Punjab government approved major expansion of its counter-extremism and digital security efforts with establishment of a new Counter-Narrative and Cognitive Security Wing within the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD).
The new wing is being designed to tackle the growing challenge of digital propaganda, online misinformation and anti-state narratives, with the government approving 120 new positions as part of the initiative.
The proposed setup will bring together specialists from range of digital and intelligence-related fields. Recruitment will include Project Director, Deputy Directors and Senior Analysts, along with experts in Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and dark web analysis.
The new wing will also have dedicated digital media managers, social media strategists, fact-checking specialists and content writers, signalling a greater focus on monitoring and analysing the rapidly evolving digital information environment.
As part of field operations structure, the government approved the recruitment of 40 field coordinators, in addition to other support staff required to run the new setup.
The financial scale of the initiative is also important as Counter-Narrative Wing has been allocated an annual budget of Rs492.1 million while the total estimated cost of the project is expected to exceed Rs3 billion.
The new wing will focus on analysing information circulating across digital platforms, identifying and responding to digital propaganda and anti-state narratives, and carrying out fact-checking and information analysis.
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