Restrictions on Social Media Access by the Government and the Right to Get News

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.200818.045How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Communication Technology, Social Media, Hoax, Government Policy, Human Rights

Abstract

The Government of the Republic of Indonesia, through the Ministry of Communication and Information (Kemenkominfo), restricted the public in this country from accessing social media on May 22, 2019. This policy was adopted because at that time the frequency of spreading information and false news (hoax) increased very sharply with big worrying impacts. According to the Ministry of Communication and Information, the spread of hoax increased sharply by 85% before the 2019 Presidential Election. A month before the policy was taken or during April 2019 alone 486 hoax were spread to the public and 209 of them were categorized as political news. The amount was very large when compared with the accumulation of hoax distribution in previous months. During August 2018 - April 2019, political news hoax were only 620 news stories, followed by the government category (210 hoax), health category (200 hoax), crime category (113 hoax), and defamation category (159 hoax). Increased hoax distribution ahead of the 2019 presidential election resulted in fears of losing public confidence in all the news circulated even though the news was true. This was what happened on May 21, 2019 when the General Election Commission announced the results of the elections which were held simultaneously on April 17, 2019. People who rejected the election results staged a demonstration that led to terrifying chaos. To anticipate the turmoil that might be greater in the community, the government then issued a policy restricting public access to social media limited to downloading and uploading photos and videos. Government policies of a certain size seem to violate human rights (HAM), but they actually carried out the policiy by staying within the legal corridors of the Information and Electronic Transaction Law which regulates information and electronic transactions and information technology in general in Indonesia.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Karbala Madania
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/08/19
TI  - Restrictions on Social Media Access by the Government and the Right to Get News
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd Jogjakarta Communication Conference (JCC 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 195
EP  - 199
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200818.045
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.200818.045
ID  - Madania2020
ER  -