Facebook, Twitter And WhatsApp Are The Main Sources Of The Spread Of The Highest Hoax 2022

JAKARTA - The Indonesian Anti-Slander Society (Mafindo) noted that Facebook was one of the most hoax distribution sites during 2022.

"Indeed, so far the top three channels that are the channels for spreading hoaxes are Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp," said Loina Warin-Angin, Presidium for the Indonesian Anti-Slander Society (Mafindo) at the Mafindo Webinar "Litbang Talk #01", Wednesday, May 3, confiscated by Antara.

Not only Facebook, he said, in second place was occupied by Twitter and third WhatsApp as a channel where hoaxes were widely distributed. He detailed that on Facebook there were 627 hoax cases or 36.9 percent, Twitter with 416 findings or 24.5 percent and WhatsApp with 226 findings or 13.3 percent.

"Facebook's position has never changed over the last few years. He has always been ranked first, but for Twitter and WhatsApp it has sometimes alternated positions," he added.

Along with TikTok's skyrocketing popularity, hoax findings on this channel are even higher when compared to previous years where only 133 hoaxes or 7.8 percent. He admitted that he had observed an increase in the use of TikTok as the distribution of hoaxes in 2022.

"TikTok is starting to rise but this year it turns out that the numbers are even higher. This shows the popularity of TikTok which is slowly starting to skyrocket to become a channel for spreading hoaxes," he said.

Even so, this composition does not represent the hoax ecosystem as a whole. This is because there are still areas that have not been monitored such as dark social and word of mouth (woman).

On the other hand, it classifies the type of narrative in hoaxes into several parts. For 2022, the most dominant type of hoax narrative is the wedge driver type of about 651 hoaxes (38.3 percent). This shows that the 2022 hoax narrative tends to hold hidden motifs to generate negative sentiment towards a specific party.

Then, the type of pipe dream with the characteristic of giving false hope that is too good to come true is in second place with a total of 602 hoaxes (35.5 percent). Meanwhile, it is the same type as 125 hoax cases.

"This shows that hatred and hope are the 2 most widely used things to exploit readers' emotions," said Loina.

According to Loina, most of the images and videos are used as claim boosters with the findings of 1,137 hoaxes (67 percent). Hoax claims are sometimes placed in captions or in images or videos shared.

In smoothing out the spread of hoaxes in 2022, they usually use the names of the central and regional governments with findings of 417 hoaxes (24.6 percent). He saw that this category was sometimes simply painted, sometimes it also becomes a target of negative sentiment that is grown through hoaxes.

"The dominance of this category shows that hoaxes should be watched out for as an effort to reduce public trust in the government," he said.

Loina also mentioned that those who often clarify hoaxes that have been circulating in the community are independent fact-checkers of 1,011 hoax findings (59.5 percent), the government is around 248 cases and clarification by more than one party is still minimal, only 62 findings (3.7 percent).

"This fact-checker is not