Infodemic management: Experience in Indonesia
What are the essential steps in infodemic management? Mafindo’s experience teaches us the importance of community work.
Last week, we had the pleasure of having Santi Indra Astuti from the Islamic University of Bandung, who also works for the fact-checking organisation Mafindo, as our guest speaker in ANNIE Connect.
Santi has been working closely with the WHO and played a crucial role in public health communication during the early phase of the pandemic as part of the expert team that led risk communication for the COVID-19 task force in Indonesia.
Why does infodemic matter?
In July 2021, Indonesia experienced a devastating wave of the Delta variant, which transformed the country into the new epicentre of Asia’s COVID-19 crisis.
Santi and her team at Mafindo collected and clustered misinformation in Indonesia from February to July of that year and identified three misleading, and possibly fatal, narratives that could misguide people to make decisions that can be very harmful:
COVID-19 is similar to influenza (not a serious disease).
Hospitals were manipulating data by falsifying patients as having COVID-19 (to get government subsidies and other reasons).
Vaccination is risky because there are always severe adverse effects following immunization (AEFI), including death.
Mafindo’s survey in 2021 showed that 61.6% of respondents expressed concerns about the credibility of information they see on the internet, while the data from Asosiasi Penyelenggara Jasa Internet Indonesia (APJII) indicated that among various hoaxes circulating in Indonesia, 6.78% of them were health-related.
In the same year, studies conducted by UNICEF in nine big cities in Indonesia during the Delta wave presented that 48% of people felt they had never encountered any misinformation in months, which suggested that many of them could not easily identify misinformation.
Santi’s work focused on health-related misinformation because, compared to other types of misinformation, such as politics, its impact proved to be devastating.
Seven steps of infodemic management
She collaborated with WHO and UNICEF to discuss the challenging issues and followed through with the essential process of infodemic management.
Step 1: Social listening to understand misinformation & public concerns
At the time, Mafindo was asked to provide a weekly digital listening report on social media conversations to gain insights into ongoing discussions among the population.
They compiled a weekly list of 10 popular hoaxes and 3 fact checks. Based on their archive, they also mapped the types of hoaxes monthly.
She said monitoring the digital realm alone was insufficient, as conversations in the digital world spilt over into the offline world and got amplified, but social listening in the non-digital world was challenging.
Step 2: Deliver high-quality health information
The difficulty was how to transform scientifically dense health information into something understandable for the general public.
She found that effective methods include storytelling, contextualizing information in the local language, and using humour, such as funny memes.
Step 3: Apply interventions, toolkits, and methods
Mafindo developed tools such as educational cards and WhatsApp stickers that could easily reach the community and get shared. The stickers shown below targetted the elderly community, for example.
Step 4: Counter misinformation and disinformation
This is the core of Mafindo’s work, which has been a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network for more than a few years now. It involved disseminating debunks, providing training, and promoting education amid the pandemic.
Step 5: Monitor information, environment, and responses
In the weekly digital listening report, Mafindo examined trends of conversations regarding COVID-19 and vaccination issues.
They also conducted thorough content analysis on various aspects of misinformation in terms of themes, types, and tools used to debunk it.
Step 6: Support healthy behaviours and resilience to misinformation at individual, community, and societal levels
From the first month of the pandemic until October 2022, Mafindo participated in the Social Inoculation project, which utilized social media listening and social inoculation strategies to diagnose and address the impact of the infodemic related to COVID-19, routine immunization attitudes, and future vaccine acceptance in Indonesia.
In order to accomplish this, solely relying on databases and fact-checkers was insufficient. Santi said what the project did was to find trusted people within each community who could initiate conversations.
The project supplied these people with knowledge and necessary information and managed to maintain good relationships with them to enhance further communication.
Between February and April 2022, they recruited and trained medical cadres from each community, who then returned to their communities to deliver pandemic-related information and messages. They also assessed their communities' situations and deployed customized approaches while tracking behavioural changes.
Step 7: Strengthen outbreak preparedness and response
Debunking alone is not enough; prebunking is essential. The goal is not only to raise public awareness about fact-checking but also to foster resilience against future misinformation. And this relies on community engagement and community action.
ANNIE’s take:
The social inoculation strategies applied in the project can be extended to address other general health issues beyond COVID-19. What is important is the communication and dissemination method.
Establishing trust within the community can be the key to success when managing the infodemic at the community level.
Localizing educational materials and utilizing community resources are great ways to open up dialogues and build mutual trust.
The initial process of informing the public is always challenging, especially during health emergencies such as the pandemic. However, once the conversation starts, there is a chance to get your messages across.