Highlighting the phenomenon of spreading hoax or false news in Indonesia is increasingly rampant, Miriam Budiarjo Research Center (MBRC) FISIP UI held a discussion about digital literacy under the title “Indonesia Under Digital Hoax Attack”. The event which was opened for public was held in the 1st floor of Meeting Room of MBRC Building of FISIP UI on Monday (10/3). The speaker in this discussion was Dr. Ross Tapsell, a lecturer at the Department of Gender, Media and Culture of the Australian National University who focuses on media and cultural studies in Southeast Asia.
In this discussion, Dr. Ross Tapsell explains how the political groups of oligarchs and netizens are reinforced by digitalisation, and how societies with different views can form with their rapid development thus creating hoaxes as one of their propaganda strategies. The use of social media is growing rapidly in Indonesia. When the statistics say that internet penetration in Indonesia is relatively low, but more than 70 million people in Indonesia have a Facebook account. Other facts also reveal that Jakarta is a city that has the most number of tweets per minute compared to other cities around the world. Instagram is also increasing rapidly, but political noise (political noise) mostly occurs on Twitter and Facebook. In both platforms black campaign can spread very quickly. One of the contributing factors is the characteristic of Indonesian people who are easier to trust the nearest people as a source of information, rather than mainstream media. Two examples of cases presented by Dr. Ross Tapsell is a phenomenon of Jakarta’s political contestation this year and the issue of “The Sawito Trial” is sticking out.
Exposure of Dr. The more complete Ross Tapsell about the media phenomenon in Indonesia can be found in his book “Media Power in Indonesia: Oligarchs, Citizens, and The Digital Revolution”.
Indonesia Under Digital Hoax Attack
