Rumah Pemilu Indonesia Election Portal
Gajah Mada University political communications observer, Nyarwi Ahmad, predicts that there will be a lot of hoaxes in the 2024 Simultaneous Regional Elections circulating. Simultaneous regional elections are held in all districts/cities and provinces in Indonesia, or as many as 508 regions to elect regents/mayors and 37 provinces for governors and their deputies. If ten hoaxes appear in one area, then there will be at least 5,450 hoaxes in all regions during the regional elections.
“This means that if there is a potential hoax, there could be 2,500 to 10 thousand hoaxes appearing. Not to mention its spread on social media. “We will have lots of social media that the public will use,” said Nyarwi in a discussion on Overcoming Hoaxes in the 2024 Pilkada broadcast by TVRI, on Monday (10/6).
According to Nyarwi, there are several actors who produce hoaxes, namely candidates, success teams, volunteers, individuals, and election organizers who release inaccurate information. Meanwhile, the majority of hoaxes target candidates’ policies and personalities.
“There is even a possibility that election organizers may accidentally release inaccurate information. “That also has the potential to give rise to hoaxes,” he said.
In line with Nyarwi, member of the Indonesian General Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu), Herwyn JH Malonda also predicts that the number of hoaxes in the 2024 Simultaneous Pilkada will be greater than in the 2024 Election. If hoaxes in the General Election focus more on figure-based executive elections, namely the Presidential Election (Pilpres) , there will be many hoaxes targeting candidate figures in various regions.
“Nationally, it could be handled by Kominfo (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology), but because this is spread across regions and simultaneously in all regions, it needs to be coordinated by involving relevant stakeholders, including government officials,” stressed Herwyn in the discussion held. The same.
Chairman of the Presidium of the Indonesian Anti-Defamation Society (Mafindo), Septiaji Eko Nugroho, is of the opinion that hoaxes in video format and in the form of synthetic content will be widely circulated in the upcoming regional elections. He also predicts that issues from the 2024 election will be used in hoax content in the regional elections. For example, the issue of the Recapitulation Information System (Sirekap) is narrated as a tool to manipulate election results, which will be used again in the Pilkada.
“In fact, we also see that when the General Election and Pilkada are in the same year, the issues in the General Election can also be brought into the Pilkada. “As happened in the 2017 regional elections. This is the first time we will hold regional elections simultaneously in all regions, so the ecosystem in the regions must anticipate,” concluded Septiaji in the same discussion.
Bawaslu said that it would work again with social media platforms, Kominfo, and civil society coalitions in dealing with hoaxes in the regional elections. Bawaslu encourages Kominfo to empower regional Kominfo agencies to be able to monitor and handle hoaxes effectively together with regional Bawaslu.
“Kominfo needs to empower regional agencies and departments so that they can jointly anticipate, while we make efforts to involve the public,” concluded Herwyn. []
