Why Indonesians are susceptible to misinformation

Nowadays, everything in our life is online, whatever we want to find is available on the internet, whether it’s rare goods or detail specific information about some people. We live in the era where it is no longer us who are looking for information, it’s the information itself that come to us without even being asked.

For an archipelago country with 17,000 thousand islands spread across equator, internet plays important role for Indonesia, as it’s able to create equal opportunity for its citizen. A talented bathroom singer in Sumba has the same odd to be found by an agent as the one in Bandung, for instance.

Anti-Ahok ‘Peaceful’ rally turned into violent an vandalism act. Image from BBC

Internet has changed how we live and how we interact with others. Perhaps, it should also change how we think especially when amount of fake news and fabricated information have abundantly polluted it.

As more and more heated argument and friction among our society are happened because of this abundant provoking misinformation (ie. Ahok’s case), it is essential to look for factors that make our society susceptible to being misinformed.

During New Order, Indonesians used to live in a country where there was only one television channel with only one news program. All the news broadcast was the one approved by the government. Though by the time the new order ends few television channel have appear, the news disseminated through the people was similar.

Meanwhile, in school, students were being fed with textbook material made by the authority and were discouraged to criticize or question it. Some books were censored or even banned. Comparative reading which could offer many perspectives in seeing things was never being introduced. There was only one point of view and it was what the ruler wanted the students to believe.

Those who grew up during new order are now in their adult age. The older they are, the more conservative and close minded they might be. Not all, but most. It is perhaps related to longer exposure of authoritative environment that has shaped their character.

Furthermore, most Indonesians would first be exposed to indoctrinate teaching of religion and culture from their parents prior to receive formal education at school. They were being loaded with religious and cultural teaching which emphasize more on what and how things should be done, rather than why they should be done. Even if they asked why, their parents would not answer it appropriately as they did not know either.

There was a research being done in Jakarta which found that level of knowledge in a low socioeconomic community did not relate to their attitude and behavior. The populations in the study had a good attitude and behavior toward sanitation, regardless their low score on knowledge test. This was an anomaly since in many other settings, attitude and behavior would only changed after there was an intervention being made on knowledge level. Apparently, these people only followed what their leader asked them to do without even know the reason why they should do it.

The combination of authoritative environment, mischievous education, and indoctrinate teaching in the beginning of life, apparently have created close minded adults who had no ability to question the information they got. For them, to consider something as truth or fake is depended on who deliver the information (or misinformation) not, what the context of the information and the evidence behind it. They are more likely to use intuitive thinking rather than critical and analytic thinking.

Based on The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, critical thinking is intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. While analytic thinking is the abstract separation of a whole into its constituent parts in order to study the parts and their relations.

To have a critical and analytic thinking is not easy, there may be barriers within oneself such as incapability of seeing things from more than one perceptive and reluctance to question the norm. In academic setting, common sense is usually questioned or challenged, but in a community where religious or cultural teaching deeply rooted, it will be hard to do it.

Critical and analytic thinking are what needed the most when information come at us every second from every possible direction. Our mind should be in these mode anytime we learn about something new. We can not rely on who deliver the news to decide its truth since everyone has the same odds to speak falsely, regardless who they are and their social status. We should first consider to criticize and analyze the information, list every possible question, look for the evidence, identify the argument and finally conclude it to decide whether the information given is true or false. Thus, if ones fail to incorporate critical and analytic in their cognitive process, they will easily fall to misinformation.

The Reliability of Social Media

Nowadays, Jakarta’s Governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, maybe the most influential people live in Indonesia. His short speech has moved over hundred thousands fundamentalist Muslims to take the streets, not only once but twice, asking for justice on his alleged blasphemy case. The peace rally which claimed to be purely intend to guard Ahok’s court trial, at the end has turned to be a trial for treason.

All of this chaos may never happen if we do not live in social media era where it has allowed people to communicate in more efficient ways than ever before. Things can be “liked” or “shared” on Facebook without even leaving the comfort of seat. It only needs one simple post to move a heart, cause a suspicion or spark hate all over the country.  

Sharing hoax news in social media is easy and relatively safe. By making a fake account, we can post everything we like without being identified. To make it more believable, we can also buy followers or friends. Or else, if we want to keep our hands clean, we can give some money to an administrator of a famous social media account and let them generate the news we ordered, @triomacan2000 for example.

Hoax news even when it first intended as a joke isn’t victim-less. Back in 2013, news about a man who sued his wife for bearing ugly children emerged in social media. A family photo of a beautiful couple with their two ugly weird looking children accompanied the news. According to the news, at first the husband suspected his wife for being unfaithful, but after he found out the DNA test of his two children showed that they were his children, he sued his wife for dishonesty for never telling him about her history of plastic surgery. Without questioning its accuracy, many people hit the share button and jokingly talked about it.

Apparently, this story was an internet fiction and the picture in it was photoshopped. Although a fabricated one, but the magnitude of sharing has made this news seems true and lure us to believe it. Only recently we learned about its accuracy after the woman in the picture confessed in a press conference that the news was fake and it has costed her a modeling career and her mental health. She has battled for depression ever since. One that we just learned after 3 years of believing.

In Indonesia, Facebook has turned into a platform to stay up to date, not only with our friend’s life but also with world news. Throwing back in 2014 presidential election, our current president Joko Widodo was accused of being a Chinese Christian and a communist, a fatal blow-though-ridiculous sounding for a presidential candidate in a Muslims country.

Now that we are close to Governor’s election, there are parties who once again try to gain benefit by using social media to post over-analyzed-extrapolated claims about what Ahok’s been saying and his true intention. Since Ahok belongs to a Chinese Christian, a group that much dislike by most indigenous Indonesians for being richer and more successful, it is easy for a political actor to bend what he actually meant to say into a case of blasphemy, a lure that is embraced by extremist fundamentalist muslims groups.  

Recently, the issue of news accuracy shared in Facebook has finally reach Zuckerberg’s main concern. During US presidential campaign, Facebook had helped disseminating fake news, showing how poorly Facebook algorithm managed over its content. Following this embarrassment, it will finally try to find a way to limit deceptive posts by using artificial intelligent. However, this may take sometimes to be implemented in their page.

Until social media has figured out how to filter false news, users themselves should be at forefront of filtering every information they come across during browsing. It’s important for us to be doubtful about everything shared in social media until we find other reliable resources to confirm or debunk the news. Nevertheless, this isn’t an effective way to curb threat for treason. Thus, government may need to intervene every social media posting that could hurt country’s stability. If censorship is needed to maintain our unity in diversity, then maybe it should be done. 

The Cost of Popular Policy on HIV/AIDS

(Also appears on Jakarta Globe's page, here http://jakartaglobe.id/opinion/commentary-cost-popular-policy-hivaids-prevention/)

If people had to pick a disease that will take their lives, most will probably choose cancer over HIV/AIDS, knowing that there is more of a moral issue attached to the latter.

People with AIDS are the most stigmatized group. Even before becoming infected with HIV, society would have rejected most of them already. Prostitutes, drug users, prison inmates and homosexuals are classified as high-risk groups, which means that they have a greater risk of contracting HIV than other people. So once people in these high-risk groups become infected with HIV, or develop AIDS, it is no surprise that society will condemn them to being punished by God.

Health care is a popular campaign tool for politicians as it wins votes. If we were to ask about their commitment, each one would say they are committed to limit the spread of HIV. However, many health policies are made without really understanding the problems or without any evidence. We know that this disease is spreading widely among inmates, but there are no policies that try to limit the spread of the disease in prison. We also know that the transmission of the disease can be prevented with the use of condoms, but when condom use is promoted, it is suddenly considered unethical and disgraceful

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Red ribbon symbolizes solidarity toward
people living with HIV/AIDS

There is unlikely to be a bigger harm being done by the closing of brothels. This policy has lately become a way to measure the success of every mayor in Indonesia. Surabaya Mayor Tri Rismaharini popularized it by closing the Dolly red-light district, which was the biggest brothel complex in Southeast Asia. This policy has quickly gained popularity and started to be duplicated in many other cities in the country.

Brothel complexes, or lokalisasi, have long been effective places for health promotion. Lokalisasi, which means "to localize," served as an important way to limit the spread of sexually transmitted infections among a major high-risk group. Brothel complexes act like reservoirs of STIs and they keep the disease inside, which makes health promotion and early detection easier. Health professionals can visit these areas on a regular basis to provide cures for STIs and increase specific protection of this group by delivering condoms and lubricants. Once a brothel complex is destroyed, there is no longer an easy way to detect infections and no longer an effective way for health promotion and early treatment of STIs. This is a nightmare scenario for the spread of HIV/AIDS, as untreated STIs make HIV more likely, while the unavailability of condoms make STIs more common. It becomes a vicious cycle.

Many people believe that by closing brothels, prostitution ceases to exist. Pimps and prostitutes are converted to become entirely new people who continue their lives by doing productive work. The government means well by providing occupational training to help them develop new skills so that they do not resort back to prostitution. But how many of them stay on the right track is a question the government rarely asks.

Prostitutes are thought to be outcasts and even after they leave the sex trade, they are still thought of as sinful people and face rejection. Even when they are victims of human trafficking, who did not voluntarily choose prostitution, society still casts them out. How can someone start a business with zero acceptance from those around them? This makes them vulnerable to going back to prostitution, even when they aim to lead new lives.

If the only thing they have mastered to make a living is selling their bodies, and the only people that accept them are their clients, there is nothing that will stop them from returning to the sex trade.

This is a bad news for public health. The sex trade is driven underground, which make it more difficult for them to be "rescued" again. It can happen anywhere and there is no more reservoir that can act to limit the spread of STIs. It will be harder to monitor and it can only delay case detection and treatment of infections, whereas the viral load in those that are HIV-positive decreases once antiviral treatment starts. Therefore, treating it early also serves as an important tool to limit the spread of the dreaded disease.

Much research has been conducted to promote better handling of HIV/AIDS in populations but implementing those measures in society still seems like it is in the distant future. The government still prefers to make policies that are popular with voters, rather than those that prove to work, but which may be unpopular. High-risk groups are already cast out anyway, so excluding them when making policy will not hurt politicians' popularity and future chances for re-election. Then one should really ask if HIV/AIDS is truly God's punishment – not for its stigmatized victims – but for our ignorance