As we noted last week, irrespective of whoever contests in Sri Lanka’s next presidential election, there will be another race at the same time – between correct information and disinformation. Election disinformation can come in various forms, ranging from fabrications and distortions to half-truths, misinterpretations, and other abuses of facts. They can target candidates, political parties, political ideologies, as well as democratic institutions like election authorities and the courts. Both mainstream media and digital media are being used to poison the public mind. In liberal societies committed to respecting the right to freedom of expression, countering it entails a tough balancing act. The Election Commission of Sri Lanka (EC) said that it was looking for mitigation strategies. In particular, it was studying how India and Indonesia tackled the same challenge. Last week, we discussed the role of disinformation in Indonesia’s multiple elections held on 17 April 2019, which international observers said were free and fair. But the leading contender for the presidency refused to accept defeat, alleging election fraud. The ensuing demonstrations turned violent, with eight people killed and hundreds more injured. As researchers have documented, this violence was fuelled in part by disinformation. But there was also some good news from the same election: How civil society and media houses came together to contain and counter politically charged disinformation. Jakarta 2016 This year was not the first time disinformation played a role in an election in Indonesia, the world’s third largest democracy with nearly 193 million registered voters. When a gubernatorial election was held in early 2017 to elect the Governor of Jakarta, incumbent Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (popularly known as Ahok) sought a second term. Coming from a double-minority background, being a Chinese-Christian Indonesian, Ahok was a popular governor with an approval rating of 66% a year before the election. But when he announced he was seeking a second term, he faced a massive disinformation campaign that focused on his minority identities. Adherents of all religions are free to run for and occupy any public office in Indonesia. Yet, Ahok not being a Muslim suddenly became an issue. The election became a referendum of sorts on the future of Indonesia’s ethnoreligious diversity and tolerance. Several radical Islamist groups, most notably the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), accused Ahok of blasphemy by mocking a Quranic verse, which many voters apparently believed. In the end, Ahok suffered a shocking defeat, coming third in the first round, and second in the second round. According to Nithin Coca, a freelance journalist covering politics, environment, and human rights, election disinformation spread through viral videos, social media platforms, and disreputable online media outlets. While Anies Baswedan, who won the 2017 gubernatorial election, distanced himself from the worst of the rumours, he had attended mass rallies organised by right-wing Islamists and benefited heavily from the disinformation effort. Countering disinfo Coca says the availability of cheap smartphones has completely changed the way Indonesians access news and current affairs information. This, in turn, led to fears that disinformation could affect the integrity of elections scheduled for April 2019. When the campaigns got underway, he wrote: “There were a lot of misinformative memes going around, including some that gained traction. They were effectively countered, however, by a multipronged counter-misinformation effort conducted by the Indonesian Government, the media, and civil society. A month before the election, polls found that while many voters had seen viral hoaxes and examples of misinformation, few believed them.” How was this turnaround accomplished? Indonesians used a multipronged strategy that relied on collaboration and co-ordination. From late 2018, Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication held weekly briefings on fake news, to help the public “sort through the news”. Disinformation or fake news stories – which Indonesians call “hoax” news or “black campaigns” – were accompanied by factual explanations. The clarifications and debunking were also shared on stophoax.id, a website dedicated to the task of counter messaging. Other official measures were more contentious. These included expanding the State’s ability to monitor and arrest purveyors of disinformation online. It highlighted a free speech challenge to all democracies dealing with disinformation: Can or must governments act as the sole arbiters of truth? CekFakta On a parallel track, Indonesia’s media and civil society groups came up with CekFakta – a collaborative fact-checking initiative that allowed newsrooms to share resources and respond to hoaxes before they spread too far and wide or went “viral”. Launched in June 2018, CekFakta (https://cekfakta.com) includes 22 of Indonesia’s most respected media outlets, including the largest national newspaper, Kompas, some well-regarded investigative journalism outlets, television stations, and several local or regional publications. They received support from Google News Initiative. CekFakta is a diverse coalition whose goals go beyond the recent election cycle, said Coca. Launching the initiative, Tempo.co Chief Editor and Indonesian Cyber Media Association (AMSI) Head Wahyu Dhyatmika said: “CekFakta is proof that the ecosystem for hoax busting in Indonesia is developing fast and ready to counter hoaxes and disinformation that might spread in the coming…elections. It shows how media publishers, civil society, and journalists…can collaborate to face this challenge together.” There were challenges, of course. Nithin Coca recalled: “Bringing so many different newsrooms together, along with their varying levels of skills, formats, and editorial standards, was not easy. A particular challenge was building the capacity and agility to keep up with the glut of disinformation, identify false stories quickly, and debunk them before they gain traction online.” He added that CekFakta operated under a consensus model: No particular news outlet or partner had power over others. While they operated a common website, each publication also had their own distribution systems, so that reporting about disinformation and debunking hoaxes could reach as wide an audience as possible. “This created some challenges, though, as each publication often chose to debunk the same piece of misinformation in their own way,” he said. As Astudestra Ajengrastri, a Jakarta-based fellow with the International Centre for Journalists, noted: “Not everybody has the same capabilities. Most of the newsrooms still find it hard to spot misinformation that is circulating online. They have to do it manually, or they would spot misinformation when it was already viral.” In other words, racing against disinformation requires 24x7 monitoring and rapid debunking responses. The Indonesian Anti-Hoax Society, known as Masyarakat Anti Fitnah Indonesia or Mafindo, worked closely with journalists in CekFakta operations. Mafindo was particularly helpful around high-profile events such as presidential debates. They created tools to track the spread of dis and misinformation on what they called “dark social” platforms, i.e. WhatsApp and Telegram. Mafindo (https://www.mafindo.or.id) had started as a Facebook group in 2015 and evolved into an NGO in 2016, mostly staffed by tech professionals. They engage in crowd-sourced hoax busting, digital literacy education, and public campaigns to raise awareness about hoax and its dangers. “For Mafindo and CekFakta, the biggest challenge was not their debunking work, but ensuring that their articles and social media posts reached as far and wide as the viral misinformation they were countering,” said Coca. American writer Mark Twain (1835-1910), who worked part of his career as a journalist, summed up this challenge thus: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” In this case, Mafindo and CekFakta helped speed up the truth. Since its launch, CekFakta has had rapid growth in web traffic, social media followers, and content shares. During the 2019 election, the alliance worked with Facebook and Google, and plan to engage more tech platforms to improve reach. There is evidence to show that efforts by the state, media, and civil society reduced the reach and negative impacts of disinformation, but there is much unfinished business. What happened after Election Day highlights the need for sustaining election disinformation monitoring and rapid responding for at least a month afterwards, until the outcomes are digested and, hopefully, accepted by all involved. (Science writer Nalaka Gunawardene has been chronicling and critiquing information society for over 25 years. He tweets from @NalakaG)