TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Anti Slander Society (Mafindo) documented numerous hoax contents spread on social media from July to September. They say that 230 hoaxes saturated social media contents with 58.7 percent that were politically motivated.
“Throughout July to September, there were 230 hoaxes, which includes 135 political hoaxes,” said Mafindo Presidium, Anita Wahid at the Communication Information Ministry today, Oct. 16.
According to Anita, the political hoaxes more likely targeted the two candidate pairs of the 2019 presidential election, Jokowi-Maruf and Prabowo-Sandiaga Uno. Jokowi’s camp was attacked with 36 hoaxes while 16 hoaxes were addressed to Prabowo.
Read: Sociologist Comment on the Danger of Hoax Infested Political Year
Moreover, on the details of the hoaxes, Mafindo’s records state that 58.7 percent of them were political slanders, 7.39 percent were related to religion, 7.39 percent were frauds, 6.69 percent regarding traffic, and 5.2 percent were about health-related issues.
Mafindo’s data show that narrated images (50.43) were the most used format to spread the hoaxes, while 26.96 percent were literature, 14.78 percent were in forms of videos with narration, while only 4.35 percent of the hoaxes were images or photos.
Facebook still tops the platform-of-choice to spread the hoaxes with 47.83 percent, Twitter comes second with 12.17 percent, followed by Whatsapp and Youtube.
Social media expert Nukman Luthfie explained that a large portion of society is still easily triggered to share unverified information without thinking it through.
TAUFIQ SIDDIQ
