By: Andari Nuri Zakiyah)*
The cyberspace, such as whatsapp, bbm, line, instagram, twitter, facebook, and blog make the young generation easily ignited issues that are currently popular on the social media. Radicalism is one of the issues that are trending today. The existence of this movement could threaten not only the younger generation but also among children and adults. The threat can infect actively or passively.
The rise of social networking applications are used by radical groups because they can send content messages with text, pictures and even video easily. This activity triggered propaganda in various circles as submitted content can spread very quickly.
This is justified by the First Deputy to the Prevention, Protection and Deradicalisation BNPT, Major General Agus Surya Bakti. According to him, the virtual world becomes the favorite to influence young people. 85 percent of social media users put on mobile, internet is the main source of about 60 per cent and 40 per cent are young people around the age of 15-25 years. Radical groups chose youth as a target of course with good reasons, they are still unstable in thinking and easily influenced by persuasion instantly. What could be seen in their gadgets are without indepth selection process like in conventional media gatekeeping.
In conventional media such as radio, newspapers and television, the selection process by the editorial meeting was held to discuss the content to be distributed are feasible or not to readers and viewers by looking at the news value, ethics and the public interest. But for social media is the opposite, it is because they do not undergo the selection process and uploaded and disseminated straightforwardly.
Therefore it is very important to campaign information technology literacy to young people. If the radicals can spread negative content about their radicalism, this campaign could be otherwise. Young people can share about peace and to report sites that spread radicalism, especially those that threaten the public interest to the managers of the site concerned. With the little action, it is expected radicalism in social media did not last long. (anz)
