Responding to Rocky Gerung’s Hate Speech, Communication Expert Emphasizes the Importance of Democratic Ethics
Jakarta – An academic who is also a political observer, Rocky Gerung, has been reported several times to the police because of accusations of insulting President Jokowi. Recently, Rocky stumbled on a similar case again for uttering hate speech against President Jokowi with the words ‘stupid bastard’.
Responding to the phenomenon of educators who often say hate, Pelita Harapan University Communicologist, Dr Emrus Sihombing stressed the importance of maturity in a democracy by upholding adab.
“We certainly adhere to democracy, but not liberally, but based on Pancasila values. It contains the word civilized, so the democracy that we recognize is civilized democracy,” he said when met in the studio of one of the national television stations.
According to Emrus, civility itself is in accordance with the values that exist in Indonesia, including ethics, decency and respect for others. Meanwhile, according to his view, the diction of ‘stupid asshole’ which appeared this weekend is an inappropriate diction, and reflects pseudo-democracy that has gone too far so that it does not fit.
“We have to separate productive criticism from criticism wrapped in an agenda. I see Rocky Gerung, if I study his track record in the digital world, he often expresses unproductive criticism of President Jokowi,” he added.
His party said yes, as long as it violates the rules and is suspected of violating the rules, then the act of hate speech is better processed.
“When there are differences about something that violates the law, the judge will decide. If the legal construction is very strong, then just report it,” concluded Emrus.
This Communications lecturer also advised that the younger generation always and only access various sources of information, and be selective about the credibility of the source.
“Don’t just come from one source. Diverse, because it will educate anyway. The younger generation certainly does not only have access to information from Indonesia, so I believe they will be able to select which messages are credible, messages that discredit or messages that are hoaxes, “explained Emrus.
When there is no certainty in public discourse like on social media, Emrus stated that conventional media should have access because it must contain a journalistic code of ethics.
“So for example, there are views that cannot be accounted for morally and ethically, so you should only access credible media, compared to accounts belonging to political actors who have pragmatic political agendas because I see that now many are hungry for power and justify any means,” he added.
Emrus also believes that Rocky Gerung’s communication messages are unproductive and the most dangerous is in the context of education.
“Is such a message an educator’s message? However, he works as an educator. I see that the account has been accessed by more than 1 million people, if the audience follows it and imitates it, then obviously that’s not good,” he said.
Therefore, Emrus suggested that Rocky Gerung apologize to the public and to President Jokowi.
“What he said was offside, outrageous and an uncivilized message,” said Emrus.
Emrus advised anyone who speaks in a public space, like Rocky Gerung and others, to be careful because anything conveyed in a public space cannot be taken back because it will leave an imprint on the cognition map so communication must be conveyed carefully.
“Communication is something that is very substantial compared to other lives because our culture and our behavior are formed due to the process of communication interaction,” he concluded.
