The Centre hosted a delegation of Indonesian journalists last week, which was facilitated by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The visit focused on discussing the growing problem of disinformation in Indonesia, and how media organisations are tackling it.
During the meeting, the delegates expressed concern that many people were falling for fake news, which is commonly referred to as ‘hoax’ in Indonesia. Some journalists shared how various media organisations in Indonesia were attempting to fight disinformation, such as by publishing a comic-style booklet, to increase media literacy among younger Indonesians. These small initiatives, they said, were helping to an extent in educating the public about how to identify and avoid hoax aka fake news.
Another issue discussed was the trend among local online content creators, who stole news and other content from Indonesian news sites and republished them on their sites and social media platforms using logos of various media organisations, which made it difficult for the public to differentiate it from legitimate sources of news. The journalists also pointed out that most of them were concerned that big tech companies and search engines, such as Google, were not doing enough to catch these fake content creators.
Finally, the Indonesian journalists expressed interest in learning how media organisations in Australia were countering mis- and disinformation, and the rise in the number of citizen journalists calling themselves journalists, when they are not.
After recent visits by Malaysian and Filipino journalists, this was the third visit by an international journalists’ delegation at the CMT over the last month.
Ayesha Jehangir
CMT Postdoctoral Research Fellow