1st Edition 2020 | Page 43

KRISIS KOMUNIKASI Information is basically the content of a message which often relates to knowledge or data. The content of the information can be disseminated through various mediums. Now with the help of technology, we can easily have access over any information that we are searching for. Nonetheless, information has a tendency to be biased and can sometimes be false. False information can be in the form of news or stories created to deliberately misinform or simply because the ‘messenger’ could not be bothered to fact check, an innocent mistake as some people would have called it. This could be harmful to the community and may lead to negative effects since the receiver may take in the message incorrectly and spread the information to other people without cross-checking the information. Fake news can be conflated into three notions which are known as disinformation, misinformation and mal-information. It is important to differentiate what is the truth and what is fake as some messages were created and distributed with bad intention. Moving on to the three notions of fake news, what is known as disinformation is basically information that’s false and is created to harm an individual, group, organization, or country. Misinformation, on the other hand, refers to information that’s false but was not created with the intention of causing harm. Lastly, mal-information that’s supported reality, wont to inflict harm on an individual, organization or country. It’s basically genuine information that was purposely shared to cause harm which had been moved from a private space to public which includes harassment, some types of leaks, and hate speech online. Back then, most people got information through television and newspapers as it was the only source of information. However, it is not the case today. People nowadays sought news via social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook as well as online news portals with the help of the Internet to learn about what is going on around them. That being said, people in this day and age don’t depend on television or newspapers anymore. However, though convenient, the Internet is also the home for inaccurate content which might be really dangerous to society to some extent. This phenomenon is called ‘infodemic’ which can be best defined as an overabundance of information that may lead to false news. This happens when the information was spread to billions of people but the quality of the information circulated has the chance to be manipulated or taken out of context. SASARAN EDISI 82 43