SOCIAL MEDIA, MUSLIM COMMUNITY, AND THE PANDEMIC: Context-Oriented Approaches to Misinformation and Disinformation in Indonesia and Malaysia

Abstract

This study focuses on misinformation and disinformation (MDI) in social media in Indonesia and Malaysia during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study argues that empirical inquiries into such general categories of contexts reveal the specificity of each of them in situ , e.g. complex landscapes of emotions in Indonesia and Malaysia as described by Heider, or the normative news clusters observed by Goal et al. in Indonesian and Malaysian online news media. The conclusion is that both content- and context-oriented strategies to counter MDI should consider the fragmen­tation of audiences in Indonesia and Malaysia and their heterogeneous emotional and normative landscapes. A hybrid, combined approach including both social media content and social networks outside of social media, but relevant for the emotional and normative context of social media users, e.g. trusted religious communities, seems to be a promising strategy to counter MDI.