Banners encouraging people not to spread hoaxes are seen on Jl. S Parman, Jakarta, on Friday (23/11/2018). Perpetrators can be charged under Article 28 of the Electronic Information Transactions (ITE) Law.
More and more people are stunned in disbelief and cannot understand why the spread of fake information, which is so misleading, is widespread in Indonesia.
People are so quick to believe fake information, hoaxes. Such public reactions make the creators and people who spread false information more passionate about doing it, and maybe without feeling guilty. The wave of false information, which is amplified by social media, is certainly not only experienced by Indonesian people, but has become a global phenomenon that is troubling many countries.
The implications and complications are not insignificant for the Indonesian people because they have complexity and sensitivity in a number of areas of life, including ideological prejudice and the Primordialism issue. Moreover, the spread of fake information is generally engineered by the elite, who mostly do not care that the majority of the Indonesian population still has low education. And they have very limited ability to distinguish between sensation and substance, or between lies and truth.
Many people are trying to connect between the spread of false information and the ongoing political battles. On the surface, there is indeed a spread of false information as part of a political battle. However, at a deeper level, the efforts to spread false information are usually related to the construction of thinking, mentality and deviant structures of consciousness. Those who spread information are happy and satisfied if someone is deceived, regardless of the broader negative impact.
There may be people arguing that the dissemination of information is only part of the strategy and political game. This kind of view is
dangerous. Isn’t politics in its original sense, among other things, precisely an effort to organize the community or a city (polis) or the state to be more orderly, more compact and not otherwise? It is worrying if politics is downgraded into a fight to seize power by justifying any means.
The impact of hoaxes is really not small. Mutual trust is broken and divisive, which is difficult to restore. Like a war, it’s easy to start, but it’s very difficult to end. It is getting more difficult to distinguish between friends and opponents, bellum omnium contra omnes, war by all against all. The flow of fake information is even more worrying because it takes place amid the noise of hate speech, ideological prejudice and mercilessness to win one’s own goals and interests.
The noise and crowds on social media, which amplify fake information and utterances of hatred, are not balanced with discourse and movement in building a work ethic oriented to honesty, discipline, kindness and truth. The movement against hoaxes feels weak and lonely. The ferocity of the flow of fake information and misdirection of information is feared to form perceptions that kill truth and common sense. That’s the beginning of a big disaster!
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