Fake News on COVID-19 in Indonesia

Abstract

AbstractThe world is not only facing a pandemic, namely COVID-19, but also an infodemic. Pandemics have become a granary for hoax news to spread, especially through social media. Fake news has accelerated very quickly on social media, given their character especially when the former US President Donald Trump has returned to the White House after a three-night stay at Walter Reed military hospital because of his and his wife Melania’s positive testing for COVID-19, just over a month before the 2020 presidential election. Indonesia also did not escape from hoax attacks carried out by irresponsible parties. This research uses a quantitative approach by analyzing content from the turnbackhoax.id website, which verifies fake news circulating on social media. The authors measure the trend of fake news for six months, January–June 2020. This trend is seen from the types of fake news that are often spread and the circulated and the platforms that are used. The results show that the trend of fake news over the past six months has decreased due to many actors’ educational efforts. COVID-19 is the most common issue, and WhatsApp and Facebook are the most widely distributed media. The authors conclude that collaborative efforts are needed to prevent the spread of fake news so that the public is well informed. Infodemic resilience is considered as the ability of systems to recover from drastic change.KeywordsCovid-19IndonesiaMedia platformFake newsResilienceInfodemic