The Age of Browsing Dangerously In Indonesia

Certainly, the hoax or fake news phenomena in social media is not exclusive nor new in Indonesia. But when it comes to nationwide impact of those hoaxes, they are. This piece argues that recent hoax with nationwide impact have brought Indonesia to an age of browsing dangerously.

The fresh memory of smear campaign utilizing hoax flying around social media in Indonesia during the 2014 presidential election would be prime example. Since those smear campaign often provokes horizontal conflicts such as race division and intolerance. Topics that go against Indonesia’s proud value of unity in diversity (Bhinneka Tunggal Ika).

State of Hoax Emergency

After the 2014 election is over, one expected the smear campaign through hoaxes to stop. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Indonesia. Even more unfortunate is those hoaxes have evolve being more creative and compelling in their presentation and narrative.

But make no mistake, they are still hoax, meaning they are false and often preposterous. We learn from the Indonesia Ministry of Communication and Informatics data, there are at least 800.000 Indonesian websites participating in disseminating hoax. It should be noted that not all those websites have ill intention. 

A prime example of recent hoax is on the issue of Chinese work force in Indonesia, where various hoaxes conveying the false news that China is “invading” Indonesia as 10 million of their work force has come into Indonesia. While in fact there are only 21,000 Chinese work force currently in Indonesia. After tracing the hoax, one would find that the number of “10 million” is in fact target of Chinese tourist that Indonesia wants to attract.

Meaning it has not happened and it is about boosting tourism economy, not taking up jobs from locals for foreigners. But the perpetrator of the hoax spin that 10 million number from tourist to work force, which sparks anxiety of foreign invasion and work employment injustice for Indonesians.

Nevertheless, the hoax works and the issue of Chinese work force become a national debate in many conventional media and popular social media platform in Indonesia, such as Twitter and Facebook. One can even say that with hoax like that Indonesia is in a state of hoax emergency. Since Indonesian government, including the President himself, had to make several clarifications to stop the hoax from further deceiving the people.

If nothing is to be done to prevent similar things to happen again, hoax could be the main driver of news, public perception, even policy making. Imagine what a policy originated from hoax could do to a country’s future and social fabrics.

How Hoax Influx Come to Be

Many opinions have come up trying to explain why hoax came to be and why many believe them. Due note that these opinions are not exclusive to Indonesia alone but more of a global context.

From a media communication perspective, one opinion say that it is due to the decline of trust towards conventional formal news media. Many readers or viewers are increasingly sceptical on the news brought up by conventional or mainstream media, whether the reason be media conglomeration or political affiliation of the media. Whatever the reason be, the result is people have start looking for alternative sources of information other than conventional media, which unfortunately some are hoax.

From a psychology perspective, one expert brought up the theory of Confirmation Bias where a person has the tendency to look or recall an information that is only confirming that person’s pre-existing belief or hypothesis. In short, people only believe what they want to believe.

From an education perspective, there is an opinion that correlation exist between the level of people’s education with hoax success rate. To be more precise, the argument point out that the more educated the people, the more likely hoax will fail to convince them, and vice versa. So, it is about level of logical and critical thinking, combine with digital literacy. An article even pointed out that globally Indonesia rank low in terms of literacy but high on social media activeness. Although it should also be noted that there are testimonies of people saying even a smart professor can still become a victim of hoax.

From a political communication perspective, arguably the term propaganda with political motivation comes into mind and even might be consider as the forefather of hoax. As a well scripted story/narrative can be so convincing and if repeated constantly can start be perceive as reality. Sadly, whether it is based on fabrication of facts or motivated agenda becomes irrelevant once the mass has deemed it as a reality.

From a mass communication perspective, we have seen an increasing trend that many individuals want to be a source of information or their personal version of news outlet. Many wants to be a star of their own show. Many wants to be heard and followed by many. Many wants to influence many, even by utilizing hoax. This has been made possible with social media and internet which allow everyone the chance to become a personal news source. Where many are capitalizing/monetizing on this form of freedom in information sharing. Elaborate examples of this can be found in the book “Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of A Media Manipulator” by Ryan Holiday.

It is within such conditions that hoax arguably grows and becomes a negative excess of freedom of communication.

Battling Hoax vs Protecting Freedom of Speech

So as hoax in Indonesia has propelled into a national hot topic, there are voices asking the government to act in battling hoax in social media. One action that Indonesian government is taking is to block access to websites that have been reported by the people to post and spread hoax. Including hoax that can elevate extremist view, or hoax that can spark horizontal conflict.

Early January 2017 figure from the Government is that there are 51 Indonesia websites blocked by the government due to hoax content relating racial and 81 websites blocked for extremism or radicalism content. While for negative content in social media platform, based on complaints from social media users to each respective platform there are 239 YouTube video upload from Indonesia blocked, 327 Indonesia Facebook accounts blocked, and 1,193 Indonesia Twitter account blocked.

The key point here is that the government has a procedure before blocking a website or reporting to social media platform to block an account, based on the Electronic Information Transaction Law. For procedure relating to website blocking, first it needs to be based on complaint made by the people to the Ministry of Communication and Informatics. Afterwards the Ministry will consult the Indonesia Press Council on the complaint. Where the Council will provide its assessment and recommendation to the Ministry before any action can be taken.

While for social media platform, the process is relatively more simple, since users can directly report the suspected negative content or the accounts posting them to the platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. If need be the government themselves report those negative content or hoax directly to the platforms.

However, such ‘to block or not to block’ action has also brought up a fundamental or classic debate on democracy, specifically on the extent of freedom of speech. Even the Electronic Information Transaction Law itself is not without critics for its potential to be misused. One legislator from the opposition even said that blocking access to those websites is a step back in democracy.

It should be noted that the opposition’s opinion is based upon that several of those websites that are being blocked are those with religious name and content. Therefore, several figures see the access blocking as an act against religious teaching and free speech, despite reports that many of those websites’ content are at the extremism spectrum.

This debate on the extent of freedom of speech, and perhaps of internet censorship, would almost surely be at the front, or maybe even the first perception barrier, in battling hoax through law enactment and enforcement. Is combatting hoax a form of forcing conformity? Or is it the duty of any government to protect its citizens from false information?

But then again how can we agree on the distinction between harmful false information and difference of opinion protected by democracy?

The philosophical debate or questions might be endless, where the discourse will be the underlying principles influencing the policy or law being enacted and enforced. Any government at the end of the day will need to make a choice and face the political and social discourse that comes with the choice. As we have seen in Turkey, Thailand, Germany, France, or Poland with their own variation of internet censorship.

Recently Indonesian government has roll out a plan to establish the National Cyber Agency who will be responsible among others to battle hoax, fighting cyber terrorism, and improving e-commerce regulation. This will be a coordinated effort between cyber defence unit from the Ministry of Defence, cyber intelligence unit from Indonesia State Intelligence Agency, and cyber security from Indonesia National Police.

As it is still too early to know the extent of effectiveness of this new Agency, such formal institutional action should be given the chance to work. Since the risk of not immediately taking a formal action is too great, when we have seen how hoax can potentially cause a social unrest based on fake information.  

Educating the Digital Mass

Many Indonesians themselves seem to have had enough of hoax. In a somewhat crowdsourcing spirit, they have taken matters on their own hand in a positive way. Many social media users have generated content encouraging others not to be fooled by hoax and sharing tutorials to avoid hoax. Sometimes even they are the ones who clarify hoax news with facts they found through search engine such as Google.

In a more systematic manner, Indonesian government is preparing to launch an initiative called “Anti-Hoax Society” as part of an effort to improve Indonesians digital media literacy, a 21^st century skill as one expert puts it. A skill that Indonesia clearly need as 133 million or 52 percent of our population is using the internet. Especially since our government is targeting to make Indonesia the largest digital economy in South East Asia by 2020, where obviously combatting hoax is a crucial part of combatting cyber-crime.

Similar positive initiative is also being undertaken by Nahdlatul Ulama/NU (the largest Moslem organization in Indonesia with approximately 60-80 million members), which they branded “Turn Back Hoax”.

Joining in the mix as well are the so called conventional media, both print and online, where many through their news are constantly reminding readers not to be fooled by hoax. There is even a plan between the government and media to enact a QR code verification system for online media, to differentiate between official/acknowledged news site with unverified websites that might contain hoax news.

What Is at Stake

An argument can be made on how fast and effective can those initiatives be to influence or help people in battling hoax. Although with a state of hoax emergency condition, such sceptic or critical thought might need to take a back seat to the support that those initiatives must be given.

Furthermore, spiralling into an endless debate at this moment can lead to a vacuum of action and provide a more fertile ground for hoax to grow and its roots strengthened. When that happens, the consequences can range from unlawful prosecution to social uproar. For Indonesia, the vision of becoming the largest digital economy in 2020 can remain a dream.

Since should hoax prevail, the simple act of browsing the internet can be deemed dangerous. So how can you build a digital economy when many people are afraid of browsing, in the wake of becoming victim to hoax and eventually cyber-crime.

As it stands, Indonesia digital environment can be said to be very much active (especially for Twitter and Facebook) but not entirely as productive, or might even still be destructive. The solution perhaps would be more straightforward in a commercial economy environment. As we have seen examples from the likes of health industry being heavily regulated from superlative and false or misleading marketing communication. However, when it comes to political, state governance, and social cultural fabrics environments, solutions against hoax get more complicated and can even cause controversy.

Hoax in all its infamous glory can tear the social fabric of a nation or even the world. It can give birth to counter-productive, if not destructive, policies. State governance would be more fragile and inconsistent in nature if they are only acting reactively to each hoax that arise. Dare we even say should hoax continue to be left alone, civilization can also crumble?

Fundamentals of Solution

How each nation decides action to battle hoax can differ. Nonetheless four fundamentals should be present.

First fundamental is democratic law. Upholding democracy or freedom of speech is important but should not be translated into vacuum of action. As long as legal instruments, procedure for check & balance, transparency, and room for continuous improvement are present, action should be taken to prevent hoax from growing before things change for the worse. Here perhaps we should recall the spirit of a famous quote that is “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.

Second fundamental is restoring trust towards media. The time has come for conventional or mainstream media to regain people’s trust. Be it in improving quality of news selection and writing, or improving the nature of their relationship with business and politics. In an age where every person can become a news outlet, conventional media needs to define its new role in society. They no longer are the only source of mass information, meaning they need to update their reason for being.

In a more practical reason, hoax often begins with a single posting in a dodgy website which attracts people to share them online. If conventional media able to regain people’s trust, the hope is that people would be more inclined to share content from these conventional media. Thus, reducing possibility of hoax spreading. An argument can be made that trying to endorse conventional media is an outdated concept in this digital social media age.

However, it is a logical step as it would be more feasible to demand journalism or reporting ethics mechanism being uphold legally in conventional media. Rather than demanding the same from hundreds of millions of individual social media accounts.

Third fundamental is constant availability of data. As often, if not many, hoax becomes believable not just because of the narrative alone, but also on the absence of information, or source for fact checking. Government should not wait for hoax to arise before releasing the data, since that would already be too late and the actual data could be perceived just as a justification of answer rather than the truth.

It is also true that government in many countries may already published or placed the data online, but often they are relatively hard to discover. Hidden in a jungle of URLs in some government website. Sometimes there are even different data variation on the same topic put out by different government institutions or agencies.

Again, we need to remember that in this digital age, people like things as simple as possible, practical, and instant. We might not agree on such human features, but it is imperative to understand and embrace those features if we want to encourage people to participate in battling hoax.

Fourth fundamental, and perhaps the most important, is participation/crowdsourcing. We need to ignite crowdsourcing solution to battle hoax since in this age of technology and borderless information, even a totalitarian government will have a hard time in maintaining information monopoly. Government, business, and social communities need to inspire, involve, and work together with the public mass to combat hoax. Such as what has already been started in Indonesia with initiatives like “Turn Back Hoax”.

Why the government? Because it is inherent within the social contract for a government to protect its people from harmful or potentially harmful practice. Why business? If not for reason of good corporate citizenship, then business should realize that if hoax prevail, they would eventually impact the economy. Why social communities? Because these communities should realize that they have the great power of being more trusted by people, and with great power comes great responsibilities.

One strong example of this is the plan for authority to legally working together with social media platforms to bring down hoax posting once identified.

For crowdsourcing in battling hoax to work, there need to be at least two basic factors. First factor is what experts and practitioners are calling improving digital literacy. As we are all aware that current Gen Y and Gen Z are digital natives born and bred. A three-year-old child now can almost instinctively know how to unlock a smartphone. These digital natives need guidance from early on to have the digital ethics including rejecting hoax, whether through school curriculum or parents’ home guidance.

While for adults or even for those who already have academic literacy, we cannot assume that “traditional” literacy would automatically translate to digital literacy. Assuming these adults do not intentionally producing or spreading hoax with ulterior motive, massive public socialization of battling hoax must be initiated by the government, business, and social communities.

Second factor is a simplified participation process, where people can report hoax to the authority through digital or social media channel in just one to three simple steps. Remember that nowadays many people like things as simple as possible, including User Interface (UI) in digital based public services.

So even if all the people are digital literate, they would remain passive in reporting these hoaxes if the process is too complicated. Thus, the authorities would then need to roll out too much resources in identifying hoax in social media 24/7.

Bravery Brings Innovation

The phrase “The Age of Browsing Dangerously” is inspired from the phrase “The Year of Living Dangerously”, made popular in Indonesia by the first President, Soekarno where he made his “Vivere Pericoloso” (living dangerously in Italian) speech back in August 17, 1964.

People often interpret this speech of Soekarno of people living in a state of danger. Partly influenced by the 1982 movie of “The Year of Living Dangerously” starring Mel Gibson which tells the tense story of Indonesia during the eve of an attempted coup by the 30 September Movement back in 1965.

Although, if we look at Soekarno’s Vivere Pericoloso speech, what he was saying and encouraging was for Indonesians to live bravely in facing challenges ahead.

It is that same brave spirit which we need to embrace in surfing the digital scene in this age. For without bravery in this digital world, there would be no innovation, an important currency in the digital age.

To put it more positively, innovation in digital is born through bravery. Therefore, we all need to work together to battle hoax, so that people would not be frighten to browse, to post, to share. Instead we need to encourage people in this age to browse dangerously (bravely), to give birth to innovation.