Just like much of the rest of the world, Indonesia is facing a crisis of fake news and bot network infiltration on social media, leading to rampant propaganda, mass belief of disinformation, and not fully understood effects on voters that may affect them deeply enough to alter election results. Salma (2019) describes this crisis and identifies the solution as critical digital literacy, essentially educating people about the nature of fake news, algorithmic gaming of social media platforms, and identifying bot networks.
Salma consolidates the issue into two problems: computational propaganda and hate spin politics. She defines computational propaganda as “the use of algorithms, automation, and human curation to purposefully distribute misleading information over social media networks” (p. 328). This includes fake news created and spread on social media, bot networks driving attention to and changing conversation around particular issues, and the groups who organize these campaigns of disinformation. Her definition of computational propaganda encompasses much of the fake news crisis currently rattling the United States, as well as other countries.
The other primary issue she identifies is hate spin politics, which is less easily defined. She describes it as “exploit[ing] freedom in democracy by reinforcing group identities and attempt[ing] to manipulate the genuine emotional reactions of citizens as resources in collective actions whose goals are not pro-democracy” (p. 329). Hate spin politics seems to be the weaponization of identity politics and emotion in the digital political sphere, using religion, nationality, sexuality, and other identity markers to turn people against each other. It not only aims to segregate people based on their identities, but to inspire people to self-select into identify groups to create political warfare.
Computational propaganda and hate spin politics are carried out by several groups in Indonesia. Salma identifies Saracen and Muslim Cyber Army as responsible for various fake news campaigns, and there have been notable suggestions of similar political interference from Russia (Sapiie and Anya, 2019). These tactics have shown to be successful on a large scale and with dire consequences in the case of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, the politician who was imprisoned for blasphemy based largely on an edited video that went viral on social media.
Indonesian government officials are keenly aware of the problem computational propaganda presents, taking significant steps to counter fake news spread. In 2018, they began weekly fake news briefings intended to address false stories that have gained traction (Handley, 2018). Salma suggests an increased focus in critical digital literacy, or teaching people to “evaluat[e] online content or digital skills but also to understand the internet’s production, management and consumption processes, as well as its democratizing potential and its structural constraints” (p. 333). Essentially, critical digital literacy is to computer or technical literacy what reading comprehension is to literacy. It’s not enough for users to be able to use a computer and navigate the Internet; there needs to be a solid understanding of what they’re seeing and why, including who might have produced content and how it came to be presented to that user.
Who could argue with that? Of course increased education about the creation and spread of fake news and algorithmic manipulation would be useful to nearly all Internet users, and it might help counter the spread and impact of computational propaganda. However, Salma offers no explanation of how digital literacy would improve hate spin, which seems to be a larger social issue that’s just as likely to occur offline as on. Hate spin politics also traffics in emotional responses, meaning strictly logical literacy training might not be enough to retrain people to grapple with emotional manipulation.
Paper:
Salma, A. N. (2019). Defining Digital Literacy in the Age of Computational Propaganda and Hate Spin Politics. KnE Social Sciences & Humanities, 2019, 323-338.
Additional Resources:
Sapiie, M.A. & Anya, A. (2019, February 4). Jokowi accuses Prabowo camp of enlisting foreign propaganda help. From https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/02/04/jokowi-accuses-prabowo-camp-of-enlisting-foreign-propaganda-help.html
Handley, L. (2018, September 27). Indonesia’s government is to hold public fake news briefings every week. From https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/27/indonesias-government-is-to-hold-public-fake-news-briefings-each-week.html