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Jakartans scramble for flood information amid ‘inundation’ of fake news
While many turned the disaster into memes and sarcastic posts directed toward the Jakarta administration, others, however, opted to make use of the situation to spread hoaxes.
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Floods hit the densely populated area of Bendungan Hilir, Central Jakarta on Tuesday. High intensity rain and poor drainage systems have caused several locations in the capital to flood. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan )
D
ian Kurniati, a 27-year-old living in Matraman, East Jakarta, grew concerned when she an image of a flooded area on her Twitter timeline Tuesday morning. The picture, she said, showed thigh-high flooding at the Bank Indonesia traffic circle on Jl. MH Thamrin, Central Jakarta.
She was confused as to how she would be able to get to work as her office was in a flooded area. However, after reading many Twitter replies, her anxiety over the flooding gradually subsided.
“Other Twitter users said that the picture was taken long before the flooding happened but that made me confused about the actual situation at the traffic circle. Later, I turned to Google to search about the condition in the area and found that the picture was somewhat a hoax,” Dian told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Dian was not alone in coming across invalid information scattered on social media. Raka Dwiyanto, a 31-year-old from Tebet, South Jakarta, shared that he saw images of flooding on Twitter that had been retweeted by most of his friends.
“ A map showed that the floods had struck nearly the entire capital, including my girlfriend’s house in Ragunan, South Jakarta. I immediately called her to make sure she was alright but then she laughed at me saying that her house was safe from the flooding,” Raka said, adding that he had seen that the map had been declared invalid in a tweet posted by the official account of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB).
The recent flooding in Jakarta, which occurred in 294 out of 2,734 community units (RW) from Sunday to Wednesday, triggered a hubbub on social media as banjir (flooding) and Anies (Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan) were trending topics on Twitter earlier this week.
While many turned the disaster into memes and sarcastic posts directed toward the Jakarta administration, others, however, opted to make use of the situation to spread hoaxes.
