The year 2024 will be a political year which will make the atmosphere a bit heated, the many political parties involved will of course be competing with each other to throw various narratives in order to gain attention. The digital space has become a place for anyone to speak out, so hoax content has started to run rampant and needs special attention.
Digital space is something that can be accessed by anyone, with a gadget and an internet signal, anyone can express ideas or share any news, even if the news being shared seems to be a hoax.
Approaching the General Election (Election), a healthy digital space of course needs to be maintained by all parties. Data from the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Kemkominfo) said that there were 1,645 hoax content found related to the 2019 elections. This is of course an alarm for all parties involved in organizing the 2024 election.
In order to overcome these problems, the government through the Ministry of Communication and Informatics has prepared information technology support, a cyber security team and antidote to negative content. Where the Ministry of Communication and Information already has cyber security that works 24 hours a day and adds cyber drones to carry out surveillance of digital space and cyber attacks.
Through increasing the capacity of devices and technology, it is hoped that this will help tracking negative content using alphabetical and numerical schemes. The cyber security rapid response team also has a duty to respond to all cyber attacks that lead to government applications.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Communication and Information Budi Arie Setiadi said that he was ready to clean up social media accounts that were troubling the public ahead of the 2024 election. Such as buzzer accounts and accounts that echo hoax information and radicalism.
Budi said that controlling platforms that are disturbing the public is of course the duty and responsibility of the Ministry of Communication and Informatics. He also revealed that he would focus on developing digital infrastructure and digital ecosystems, such as e-commerce to personal data protection.
Budi said that currently his party has coordinated to take steps to prevent and handle hoaxes, disinformation, and malinformation in the digital space. In fact, his party is also collaborating with various parties to prevent the spread of radicalism content ahead of the 2024 election.
His party also admitted that he would meet with the Minister of Religion to discuss this matter, if blocking action was needed, of course it would be blocked so that digital space would become healthier from hoaxes and from content that could divide the nation.
According to him, the essence of holding elections is to unite fellow children of the nation and contribute to improving the quality of democracy. Therefore, all parties have a role to play in maintaining a safe and healthy digital space.
Budi added that his party had taken various approaches including government steps to provide coolness in the digital space or social media. Apart from that, he also invited the public to take part in maintaining a safe and healthy digital space by sharing positive content.
The government also promised to maintain digital space in a humane way so as to create a cool atmosphere ahead of the 2024 elections. This is of course in line with the expectations of the Indonesian people, especially first-time voters who are dominated by Gen Z, not to be trapped by the explosion of political information. Particularly political narratives on social media that have nuances of dividing national unity and hate speech.
Of course, in an effort to protect elections from the threat of hoaxes and radicalism, the Ministry of Communication and Informatics cannot work alone, but instead strengthen cross-sectoral collaboration to deal with political hoaxes, which are certainly troubling netizens.
Head of Reporting Sub-Division of the Ministry of Communication and Informatics Public Relations Bureau, M Taufiq hopes that with collaboration between sectors, hoax escalation cases like what happened during the 2019 election will not be repeated.
Taufiq said several collaborations had been established to deal with hoaxes for the 2024 election, including collaborating with the KPU and Bawaslu. With the collaboration of the three, it is hoped that misleading information can be immediately removed and its circulation stopped, so that it does not disrupt the conducive situation in society ahead of the 2024 elections.
Apart from that, Taufiq also said that efforts were made to approach political parties so they could support the peaceful election narrative for the 2024 election. So that the political party elites have a responsibility in suppressing hoaxes.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Communication and Informatics has also made prevention efforts by continuing to promote digital talent capacity building to be wise in cyber space through digital classes. With this digital literacy, of course it is hoped that half of the causes for the spread of hoaxes can be reduced.
The efforts of the Ministry of Communication and Information which is committed to maintaining digital space to avoid hoaxes and radicalism certainly deserve appreciation. The Ministry of Communication and Information has shown its concrete efforts in maintaining digital space so that the 2024 elections do not have an impact on hate narratives, but narratives to maintain unity.