Local Media and Disinformation ahead of the 2024 Indonesian Elections

The third speaker in this session at COMNEWS 2023 is Olivia Lewi Pramesti, whose interest is in hoaxes ahead of the 2024 Indonesian election. The volume of misinformation is expected to increase substantially during this time, and digital literacy in Indonesia has not kept track with this growth in problematic information; social media are being used substantially for storytelling, and have considerable influence on public opinion. How can local media push back against this?

The policies of media outlets have an important role to play in facilitating the fight against mis- and disinformation. This project used interviews with newsroom staff in local news organisations to explore this; the five media outlets it spoke to had different internal policies for this. There were not necessarily dedicated teams for social media fact-checking, but often carefully verified the information they published; this is sometimes a layered process that takes some time to debunk the hoaxes that are circulating online. Some outlets are themselves also pursuing vitality for their news content; this can conflict with the interest to counter mis- and disinformation.

Local media thus play an important social and societal role in elections, and empower communities by informing them and protecting them from mis- and disinformation. But they also have limited human resources and technological support, and commercial priorities may counteract policy settings. Further research is needed to observe how these local media will perform in the 2024 elections.