Be Smart to Fight Against Hoax

The Imagination of Religion and Media in Politics

(Attending a discussion at Duta Wacana Christian University 02/23/2019)

To imagine means we are imagining something fun in the future. Imagination also means that we have a hope in the future that is better than today. But what about the wild imagination that lead to disintegration and drive to a new conflicts.

"This kind of imaginations are often found in this age and getting wild," said Dr. Zuly Qodir, a lecturer in Political Sociology at UMY and  the facilitator when he opened the discussion. He revealed some imaginations that now occur among people lives, such as the existence of religious imaginations in media such as Islam as religion, in western media it was labelled as ‘negative religion’. (Ahmed and Matthes 2017; Knott et al. 2013), while Jews and Christians are imagined as the main ‘enemies’ of Islam (Karim and Eid, 2018). Furthermore, there are other imaginations such as political imagination in media, imagination in religious politics, ‘other’ imagination about politics and so on. All those imaginations direct and make people choose one of these, will to think for the life of the nation and state or have to think for the welfare life of their respective groups. Our society is driven to be individuals who think only about him/herself and their-own groups. It causes our society to be inhuman, the increase of violence, the reduction of social response, the rise of ethnic groups, the resistance and various problems from the grassroots to get justice,” concluded Dr. Zuly.

"The occuring problems are getting widespread and escalating immediately when it gets fuel of hoax issues. The various limitations and lack of knowledge of our society about using social media make us an easy target of the spread of hoax news on social media,” Valentine Wiji, the Head of Secretariat of the Anti-Defamation Society of Indonesia or MAFINDO. MAFINDO itself is a group of volunteers who are moved to collect data and information in various mass media or social media, or commonly called digital literacy. The focus of this group is to fight against dis-information and mis-information.

MAFINDO was established on November 19, 2016 with the spirit of fighting hoaxes by embracing various groups of society, to continue sharing information. It also joined cekfakta.com and collaborated with more than 20 credible online media such as kompas.com, tirto.id, detik.com, antara.com and several others and supported by Google, AMSI, & First Draft. Besides that, MAFINDO has one Facebook group account which can be an information channel for all Anti Fitnah, Hasut, and Hoax Forums or abbreviated as FAHHH which has 61.995 members to date and Instagram @turnbackhoaxid with 3.659 followers.

Valentine Wiji invited participants to join the FB group, so that, they could share news and provide true information to their families and relatives. Because mass media now play important role in disseminating information. Make sure that our families are free from hoaxes. According to the global web index, per January 2019, platfom Youtube 88%, Whatsapp 83%, Facebook 81% and Instagram 80% are active and often accessed by Indonesians.

If the community is wise in using social media, it is expected to reduce victims of violence in the name of religion, ethnicity and races. Especially in current election year situation. Public is expected to be actively involved in fighting issue of hoaxes that are scattered on social media. Let us campaign ‘love reading’ so that we can be smarter and wiser in social media. (SAP)