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.

Among the most notorious fake news spread on social media was an image showing inundation at Omni Hospital in Pulomas, East Jakarta. The image was later debunked by Twitter users, who replied to the post saying that floodwaters had only reached the main entrance of the hospital.

Another video showing several people placing sacks containing sand in sewers along with a caption saying “an unknown party has tried to sabotage the floods by clogging sewers with sacks” also surfaced on Twitter.

The post, which has since been deleted by the uploader, was declared a hoax by internet hoax-busters group Indonesia Antislender Society (Mafindo).

Dian and Raka said they had always tried to seek confirmation on any information spread on social media. However, it did not help that they encountered lots of information during the flooding as they panicked.  “I needed to calm myself before believing any picture or video on social media to be authentic,” Raka said.

Septiaji Eko Nugroho, the chairman of Mafindo, argued that sometimes the public had unconsciously spread fake news about disasters on social media as they just wanted to inform their relatives and friends about their situation.

However, at times, many had also intended to spread the false news to place blame on leaders.  Oftentimes, he added, these kinds of politically charged hoaxes not only depicted false videos or images but also contained aggressive captions to fuel public resentment toward the leaders.

“Spreading hoaxes, whether it has malicious intent, is very inappropriate behavior,” Septiaji said.

He said hoaxes related to disasters could cause excessive panic among the public despite the impact not being severe. Septiaji also raised concerns that hoaxes could hinder recovery and rehabilitation measures to be taken in a post-disaster area.

“For example, after an earthquake and tsunami in Palu, Central Sulawesi in 2018, there were many hoaxes saying that Palu airport was the only way for people to get out of the area. As a result, many people ran onto the runway at the airport, causing a plane carrying supplies and aid for affected people to abort landing at the airport,” he said, adding that his organization had also published debunked-hoaxes through turnbackhoax.com and cekfakta.com.

Enda Nasution, a social media activist, also suggested that social media users verify the information they get on social media. (glh)

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