Indonesia’s COVID-19 Infodemic: A Battle for Truth or Trust?

By Yatun Sastramidjaja

Besides being one of the countries most severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia also experienced a severe “infodemic”: an overabundance of contradictory information—including misinformation and disinformation—on COVID-19. This infodemic hampered pandemic mitigation efforts, resulting in non-compliance with public health measures and delays to the national vaccination programme in the first six months of the pandemic due to widespread vaccine hesitancy or vaccine refusal. Furthermore, it fomented public distrust of the government and other institutions.

On Indonesian social media, this infodemic engendered a peculiar type of hybrid narrative, combining global conspiracy theories with local moral economies and religious sentiments. Religious micro-influencers were particularly influential in spreading the narrative that the government’s COVID-19 policies could not be trusted, and that COVID-19 vaccines were dangerous and haram. Such posts were often removed in line with the social media platforms’ policies to combat false information on COVID-19, and the individuals who created such content risked prosecution in line with the government’s punitive approach to “hoaxes”. However, this did not lessen the prevalence of anti-vaccine narratives, nor did it mitigate public distrust of the government.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ISEAS
• Release date: Sep 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9789815104691

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