By: Joko Waryono (Chairperson of the Palembang Regional Independent Social Media Activists Forum)
Information about Covid-19 has always been a main attraction so various news related to this virus are always served by the media. Covid-19 information is always changing rapidly, both positive information that is beneficial to society and negative information that tends to mislead and plunge society.
Citizens are easy targets for the spread of Hoax on Social Media that they always use everyday. Within a day can be more than 10 hours citizens use social media to interact, work, study and find entertainment. So sad are the creators of this hoax content that it utilizes the ponaemic corona phenomenon for hoax distribution.
Thousands of Hoaxes spread so fast every day. Whatsapp group becomes the main place for its spread, especially through WhatsApp, the spread of hoaxes will become increasingly massive. People easily forward unclear messages to their coworkers or family. It is at times like this that the literacy skills of the Indonesian people are tested in capturing information and news about the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Now this is the best moment to test the ability of public literacy by selecting and filtering all the latest information about Covid-19 as a dangerous plague.
The public must continually update Covid-19 data and information from credible sources, namely from experts who handle this pandemic or the official website of Covid-19 subscription.
But there are still many citizens who believe different information, for different reasons, and he said with a different search system. This is very dangerous, some people want to be said to be good at searching for hidden information. In fact, behind it all, just the contents of the hoax. Nothing else just wants to get just treatment.
With the maturity and literacy ability will make people not easily believe in facing the rain of information Covid-19. Society is not “halu” about data that is unclear research.
Reading is against, with a lot of reading we will not easily panic and fret about the news circulating about Covid-19. In addition we can fight the massive spread of the Covid-19 outbreak. With sufficient knowledge, we can become supervisors who spread hoaxes.
Let us do literacy together and use correct information to reduce the rate of spread of this Pandemic. Sure Indonesia will recover soon!