Fake news and election: An analysis of the Malaysian General Election 2018 and Indonesian Presidential Election 2019.
Nuurrianti Jalli, Ika Karlina Idris
Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia
Faculty of Paramadina Graduate School of Communication, Indonesia
Abstract
Increasing Internet penetration across the globe and the wide distribution of false information on Internet platforms have resulted in the pressing need to study the effects of fake content on society. The advancement of technologies also had contributed to a more sophisticated false content could be produced. Widespread of forged images and realistic fake videos were made possible through computer-generated techniques. Several studies had been done by other scholars to study the influence of fake news during elections (see Allcott & Gentzkow, 2016; Persily, 2017). This research aims to look at the distribution of fake news during two elections in Southeast Asia, focusing on Malaysia 14th General Election in 2018 and Indonesia Presidential Election 2019; and how false information influenced political discourse. We employed two different methods for this study which were in-depth interviews with experts and social media analysis (SNA). We analyzed six different hashtags popular during these two elections and how these hashtags were used as conduits to share false information. For Malaysia, three specific hashtags were studied -
Keywords: Fake news, election, Malaysia, Indonesia, social media
Topic: Political Party and Election