BANDUNG, Telkom University – Nowadays, the digital world is on our hands, easy to access and instant process. People can only access it by pointing their thumbs. However, those massive exposures lead us to the question: how about its validity? A lot of hoax information is spread throughout our community in a second that might disrupt the good unity between friends; families can even the nation.
In response to this problem, S1 Digital Public Relations Telkom University students, Michael Fabian, Hashim Thachi, and Alengga Desra joined the fact-checking competition organized by the Indonesian Anti-Defamation Society (MAFINDO) and the Hoax Crisis Control Center (Hoax Crisis Center) West Java on February 22, 2020, at BLOK71, Bandung City. This team also crowned as the 2nd place in the competition.
Hashim told a contest entitled “Millennial Fact Examiner Oversees the Pilkada 2020” was initiated based on minimizing hoax in the 2020 Pilkada whose content is related to politics, ethnicity, religion, race, and intergroup. In this competition, participants of video footage with fake content.
“So in this competition, we check the fake video fragments and we have found the truth by matching between the minute by minute of the fake video and the original version.” He said.
Hashim explained that his team took part in this competition as a means and invitation to fellow students, especially the generation of millennials to jointly fight hoaxes (Hoax). According to data obtained from the Ministry of Communication and Information that students or millennial generation are few generations to be exposed to hoax news but the weakness of the millennial generation is that they do not like politics while the most dominant type of hoax in Indonesia is a political hoax.
“Therefore, according to the theme promoted by the committee, we would like to invite the generation of millennials to prevent false news, especially in the political field, so that there is no division among the Indonesian people.” He said.
To prevent the spread of hoaxes that are bad for the current generation, Hashim and his team invite the generation of millennials to be brave and concerned about the spread of hoax news, dare to find facts from the information received, and most importantly increase literacy so that it can suppress the spread of hoax in Indonesia.
“Most millennials now understand hoax news, but they are quiet and don’t care about it. Come together, we care about our current situation and fight backbiting news that is detrimental to our nation, as the next generation who care about the progress of the nation, we must care, be sensitive to educate and invite our other friends to fight hoax because of hoax or hoaxes has a very big influence on the disintegration of the nation. “He said.