By:  Yohannie Linggasari

Hoaxes are nothing new. History shows that hoaxes have been around at least since the 1600s. But, in this digital era, hoaxes are undeniably running rampant, sometimes with fatal consequences. In India, two men were killed by the masses after rumours of child kidnappers spread across Facebook and WhatsApp. In Nigeria, lies circulating on Facebook have been said to trigger mass killings due to ethnical sentiments.

Astudestra Ajengrastri (Ajeng), a TruthBuzz Fellow from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), thinks the actual term 'hoax' has a broad definition and comprises of various categories. First is disinformation. This term is used when a hoax is intentionally circulated with the aim to have a negative impact.

“Second is misinformation. This is information spread unintentionally because people spreading them thought it was correct. Third is malinformation, which is when a circulated hoax creates a fatal aftermath, like in India,” said Ajeng.

As a TruthBuzz Fellow, Ajeng was assigned at Tempo and Tirto to help fact-checkers wage war against disinformation and misinformation with interesting storytelling. “There are two kinds of fact-checking. First is to clarify hoaxes circulating on social media. Second is checking facts over claims given by the government,” she explained. Realising that many people don’t like reading long articles, Ajeng packages fact-checking clarifications into visually attractive, short videos.

Political year, political hoax
In Indonesia, the number of politically related hoaxes has skyrocketed especially as we draw closer to the election on 17^th April. In a report from Mafindo (The Indonesian Anti- Slander Society), there were 997 hoaxes in 2018, with 448 of them (50%) politically themed. Meanwhile, in January 2019 alone, 109 hoaxes were found, with 58 of them related to politics. Facebook remains the predominant hoax spreading tool, followed by WhatsApp and Twitter. More shockingly, The State Intelligence Agency (BIN), claimed that 60 per cent of social media content in Indonesia includes some form of hoaxes.

Dedy Helsyanto, a fact-checker from Mafindo, stated that he mostly finds hoaxes are related to political, ethnicity-religion-race (SARA), and health issues. He gave an example of the recent hoax regarding seven containers of cast ballots from China for the presidential candidate pair Joko Widodo-Ma'ruf Amin. Another time, he found a hoax about plastic rice that drove people into a frenzy.

On the other hand, Dewi S. Sari, the Operational Director of Mafindo thinks disinformation and misinformation have played roles in the election. “The nonvoters have their right to not vote at all. But, I think one of the reasons why they don’t want to vote is because they kept being exposed to disinformation and misinformation which makes them lose trust in the candidates or the institution that organises the election.”

Mafindo has been receiving requests from the community to clarify certain contents, and it actively monitors issues making the rounds on social media. Then, the results of these clarifications are published on the Turnbackhoax.id, also managed by Mafindo.

“We have been trying to look at the personal accounts of people spreading these hoaxes and examining the tendency of their postings. As it turns out, most of them are indeed fanatics to certain values, groups, or support,” said Dedy. He added that that educational level does not affect people’s tendency to spread hoaxes. “Even people with doctorate degree can spread rumour and disinformation.”

Dedy also argues that politically inclined hoax circulation seems to be organised. This assumption is reinforced when a hoax soliciting organisation was apprehended by the police, after which the number of hoaxes significantly reduced. “Data reveals that there are buzzers paid to create hoaxes, especially in the election year like now,” he explained.

As Ajeng mentioned, disinformation is often spread using various manipulative tricks, one of which is through the blog platform. For example, a blog will have the logo of a national media, then the hoax content is written under this logo, as if the news were true.

“So, the trick is they would screenshot the content with their phones, then have the URL address showing that it is only a blog cropped, before blasting the news. Unfortunately, receiving parties often do not conduct verification, and follow suit in distributing it even further, “said Ajeng.

Collaboration is key
Many media across Indonesia, especially online ones, have made various efforts to fight hoaxes. One of them is by establishing Cek Fakta, a fact-checking collaborative project currently joined by 24 online media. “Collaboration among newsroom is actually not easy, since media are very competitive with each other. With this coalition, a number of collective endeavors have been done to combat rumours. For example, during the last presidential debate, we held a live fact-checking session,” said Ajeng, who is also involved in it.

The increasing number of hoaxes has given rise to the need for fact checkers. It is no surprise, that several media have now established their own fact-checking teams, in addition to editorial teams that find and verify news. Rachmadin Ismail (Madin), Vice Editor-in-Chief of kumparan, said that kumparan has established a Content Intelligent team, whose duty is to detect false content and counter them with facts and data.

“We also created the Hoax Buster project, a special tagline to address hoax issues, with content from kumparan team and our media partners across 34 provinces,” said Madin. He thinks that editors and journalists are not enough to carry out all verifications on rumors.

“Editors and journalists focus more on issues on the ground, which surely demand plenty of attention, from conducting research, collecting data, to lobbying respondents. At kumparan, the Content Intelligent team was specifically formed for research, data, and issue analysis, not just for fact-checking, despite one of its outputs being research on the validity of news circulating on social media.”

Not an easy job
Ajeng elaborated that some cases need hours, even days, to verify. Fact-checkers are required to do analyses, especially to hoaxes relying on edited pictures with no clear source. “Google Image can only find the exact same picture. When it is heavily edited, it is not always easy to find the source." She added that verification articles will always be behind on likes, comments, and shares compared to hoax articles.

Meanwhile, Madin argues that the most challenging hoaxes are the ones that twist the information. “So, the photo and event are correct, but the context of the event is twisted. For example, there is a picture of someone in location A, then this person is claimed to be supporting A, even though the event happened a long time ago and in a different context.”

Fact-checkers are also often associated as supporters of certain sides when publishing verification articles linked to that side. “When we revealed facts about Jokowi, people would call us ‘cebong’ (meaning tadpoles, a derogatory name for Jokowi supporters). The same goes with Prabowo facts, people would call us ‘kampret’ (meaning small bats, a derogatory name for Prabowo supporters),” Ajeng said jokingly.