8. Next Plan

It's been three years since Cekfakta.com was established in Indonesia. In the midst of the struggle to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, now Cekfakta.com must again prepare to face the next five-year political event in 2024. Of course, the challenges will be different, but the potential for a flood of hoaxes when the political situation heats up must always be anticipated.

In various discussions on the Cekfakta.com collaboration network, a number of issues surfaced. It starts from the issue of strengthening internal mechanisms, expanding the organization and media in the network, as well as improving technology aspects to ensure faster and more widespread fact-checking content distribution. These issues will certainly affect the formulation of Cekfakta.com's future work plan.

In 2021, for the first time, Cekfakta.com will hold a regular annual meeting with the title Indonesia Fact Checking Summit. In this annual meeting, all issues faced by fact-checkers in the past year are being discussed to seek for solutions. The fact-checkers then develop recommendations for submission to relevant stakeholders.

At this year's Indonesia Fact Checking Summit, a number of important topics were discussed, such as the labeling of hoaxes on news and journalism content, the question of protecting the personal safety of fact-checkers, the issue of hoaxes that have started to appear in programmatic advertisements in thousands of online media, and also about the future of this fact-check collaboration. The event also featured discussions about the formats and methods to enable fact-checking contents to be more viral than hoaxes, as well as how fact-checking contents can be more impactful for the public.

Discussions on each of these topics will lead to recommendations for the relevant stakeholders. In the end, it is hoped that there will be a strengthening of the fact-checking ecosystem in Indonesia. Periodic evaluation to see what factors need to be improved and enhanced from this ecosystem is important so that the sustainability of this CekFakta initiative can also be guaranteed.

Internally, the strengthening of Cekfakta.com will also be carried out through a number of ideas such as fact-checking certification, as well as the application of more complete technology for content sharing and fact-checking distribution. The fact checker certification is considered important because those who are not journalists are often become victims of online bullying and other threats. The Press Law Number 40 of 1999 cannot protect them if there is no certification mechanism to ensure their status as journalists.

The same is true for community fact-checking agencies or civil society. The Press Law so far only accommodates protection for press institutions that are legal entities. Therefore, discussions have begun to strengthen the position of non-media fact-checkers before the Press Council through an administrative and factual verification process.

In the technology sector, efforts to use machine learning and chatbots to enable Cekfakta.com contents to be more easily accessed via conversational applications such as WhatsApp or Line and Facebook Messenger will also continue to be intensified.

The users of this conversation application are very susceptible to hoax issues because of the closed conversation application model. In addition, the technology platform in this application also applies the principle of personal data protection that does not allow access to the content database and their users. In fact, the data is important for mapping the network and the flow of hoaxes on the platform.

Mafindo is actually the first fact-checking agency to develop a chatbot feature on WhatsApp to help users to check facts. This initiative needs to be extended to Cekfakta.com and other media so that more people can have access to this important feature.

Verification of hoaxes also needs to continue to be extended to issues that concern the public interests. If all this time, fact-checkers have often been preoccupied with hoaxes about health and politics circulating on social media, it is necessary to start thinking about ways to make all public officials and state administration institutions to be responsible for the claims or statements they convey to the public. An experiment by Cekfakta.com on presidential and regional head candidate debates by conducting fact checks on their claims can be extended to the statements of everyday officials in the context of carrying out their duties and responsibilities.

This fact-checking model of claims and statements of public officials will encourage efforts to sanitize the public information ecosystem. It will also increase the quality and credibility of public officials' statements. This kind of public service is important to increase the political participation of citizens in the administration of the state.

Another thing that is no less important is the increase in news and information literacy. During 2021, Cekfakta.com has started public education efforts on journalism literacy. It is hoped that residents who take part in the training can better understand how the media and news work.

An understanding of journalism is believed to increase public trust in the media. In the midst of a flood of hoax information and Covid-19 infodemic, it is important to direct the public into trusted sources of information provided by the mass media. Unfortunately, online audiences are often suspicious of the motives and interests behind the news. This suspicion generally stems from their ignorance of the basic principles of reporting, verification and confirmation methods in the newsroom, and sanctions or penalties for violations of journalistic ethics.

Programs targeting efforts to strengthen the fact-checking ecosystem will be the priority of Cekfakta.com in the future. Apart from continuously producing fact-checking content and collaborating to ensure that fact-checking can continue to be effective, this ecosystem strengthening program is important as a long-term strategy against mis/disinformation. (*)

IMPORTANT LESSONS

• Cekfakta.com has started anticipating the spread of hoaxes related to the 2024 General Election by strengthening collaboration mechanisms internally and using technology that can help expand the distribution of fact-checking content.
• Certification of non-media fact-checkers, both individuals and institutions, is important to protect their safety and ensure that there are no legal threats that could limit the fact-checkers' movement.
• Fact checks on claims and statements of public officials can be Cekfakta.com's contribution to strengthening freedom of expression, democracy and encouraging a more credible information ecosystem.
• Efforts to strengthen the fact-checking ecosystem such as journalism literacy training for the public need to be carried out as a long-term strategy.