By: DHEA Putri ) *
Reading is one of the accesses that leads us to the window of the world. By reading we can know what we have never even heard. However, sometimes the incompleteness in reading an information can cause us to fall into a valley of hoaxes. Hoaks are mushrooming on various social media as if they continue to inject every audience to believe it more. Then what is the massive cause of hoaxes?
Anti Hoax Indonesian Community Initiator, Septiaji Eko Nugroho, assessed that the low literacy awareness is one of the massive driving factors for the circulation of hoaxes or hoaxes. A low reading culture causes people to swallow information instantly and intact. The information received is immediately believed to be the truth, then attempts to share that information with others. This is relevant to the records of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), according to UNESCO in 2012, the Indonesian reading index was only 0.001. That is, among 1,000 people, only one person reads seriously.
Similarly, the record of the Most Literated Nation In The World survey conducted in 2015 then placed Indonesia ranked 60th out of 61 countries. The current generation or the Z and millennial generation is the generation that grew up with technology and internet devices. As digital natives (a generation born when the digital era has taken place and is growing rapidly), the millennial generation accepts social media as something that is taken for granted (something familiar). This is different from the generation of their parents who are in the digital immigrant category (a generation born before the digital generation developed). The focus of media literacy in educational curricula is to ensure that everyone is able to read technological developments, including the consequences of the message in it critically and wisely in using it.
The weak culture of literacy for the community causes one’s reasoning power and causes difficulty in thinking clearly and critically in finding every problem, as a result reflected emotions and selfishness. Thus, provocative and incitement issues exhaled by hoax news are easily disseminated and affect the public.
The weak culture of literacy also causes an increase in plagiarism, lack of knowledge and understanding of media literacy also makes someone swallow the news that the source and truth are still questionable.
The magnitude of the impact and loss on the issue of hoaks that circulated made the government move on to campaign for the fight against hoax together. Hoax campaigns or hoaxes are now being intensified especially through social media. Hoax news is no longer seen as a simple matter, because if the spread is allowed to continue it will cause the nation’s life to falter.
The internet user community needs to be more careful in receiving and disseminating information through social media. Information containing utterances of hatred that spread quickly can threaten national unity. Technological developments and the increasing number of internet users in Indonesia, said Adhyaksa, have triggered an information war. Through social media, a variety of information so quickly enters the private space of the internet user community. That information is very easy to influence people’s attitudes and shape public opinion.
Internet users today are no longer passive as mere recipients of information. The community has turned into a citizen journalist who produces information and spreads it very quickly. The progress of social media technology is like two blades. On the one hand, it makes it easy for users to access information. On the other hand, many parties use social media as a tool to spread hate speech.
In order to combat hoax news that is spread very massive and difficult to prevent its spread, it is necessary to have media literacy by the public. Media literacy is the ability to understand, analyze and deconstruct what is presented by the media.
Media literacy is an activity that emphasizes the aspect of education in the community so that they know how to access and choose accurate and useful information. Through media literacy, the community becomes critical, sensitive to information, and able to improve the quality of the community itself by actively seeking information that fits their needs based on existing references.
In media literacy, there are stages that can be used by the community in accepting, choosing, and selecting information in accordance with the intellectual needs needed, namely, Explore, expertise in selecting and deciding the information needed from a message. Recognize symbols, the ability to identify and sort symbols, such as interpreting the meaning of mass media messages and concluding messages received by mass media and the last is to limit the number of hours used in internet use proportionally.
Of course, hoax culture cannot be eliminated just like that, but as people who are always thinking and endeavoring, if media literacy becomes an alternative solution in the midst of a wave of rumors that are now increasingly rejuvenating. Hopefully we belong to the group of people who always strive to improve the culture of literacy in order to deliver us to the window of science.
) * The author is an activist at the Student Press House