“HOW DO STUDENTS DEAL WITH HOAX IN DIGITAL ERA”

Grace Hany H.A Sianturi

The honorable judges,

respectable audience
and everyone here today.

First of all, I’d like to thank the almighty God, it is because of Him we are all able to
attend this contest. Secondly, my deep gratitude to our God who had brought us from the
darkness to this bright modern era that we are living today. And the last but not least, I’d like
to thank the judges for giving me this very special opportunity to attend this contest.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Good (......)!

My name is Grace Hany Sianturi and I'm 12th grade from Senior High school 1
Tarutung, standing here in front of you all to deliver my speech. I hope you feel as amazing
as I am right now. But, I’m not here to tell you what I’m feeling but instead I want to tell you
about How do students deal with hoax in digital era?
Hoax was the concept characterize that media debate in today’s world- they also
played a central role when, we are as students are invited in this contest. Hoax ;This
phenomena has however not only been found in Indonesia, hoax is also prevalent in most
parts of the world. Like Mark Twain said “ A lie can travel half way around the world while
the truth is putting on shoes”. Funny think about that.

Ladies and Gentlemen

Hoax? What is hoax? Hoax is not the same with misinformation and it is not the same
as a mistake or it is not the sme as views which conflict with your own. Hoax is very spesific
information strategy. It is false claims purposefully presented as news with intention of
misleading people. It includes tampering with images and text as well as fabricating
information. As explained before, at this point, hoax was being a big problem in whole world
today. It is because, hoax spread so fast. How hoax can spread so fast?
Ladies and Gentlemen
Hoax can spread so fast because of “circular reporting”. It can explain of circular
reporting when many people post on the same initial piece of false information which appears
to another as having been verified by multiple sources. It also explain as when many people
only read part of the content of an article on the internet but they immediately conclude all
the contents and spread them according to what them conclude and people triggered to repost
or share it.According to a survey as presented in this chart, that the most spreaders of hoax
are in junior and senior high school level, as we are now.how weird is that. Hoax is very
dangerous because if it is spread once it will be difficult to reduce it and often even create
large-scale harm, for instance riots in Wamena which took ten thousands of live are victims
of hoax.

Ladies and Gentlemen

You, Me , and hoax. At this point, You and me, all of us are so close with the hoax. And I
think the spread of hoaxes in this digital era is social media, like Instagram, twitter, and
facebook. I don’t wanna be a hypocrite, I’m the one of millions people who are active users
of instagram. And I’ve seen how fast hoax could be spread on instagram or even retweeted by
millions people in twitter.
Ladies and Gentlement
So, now the question: What should we do? How do we are (as students) deal with hoax?
1. What’s your first reaction?
Don’t allow your emotions to takeover. Are you angry?upset?intrigued? excited? Or
maybe even triggered? Hoax often uses emotion to draw us in and encourage us to share it.
2. Ask yourself :what is the purpose of this piece of post/information?”
Is it a news report? An opinion piece? An advert? A joke? Satire?what do you know
about the sources?are they a news outlet?blog?or politician? Identify the information first.
3. Be aware of your own biases. Are you assuming (or hoping) that’s true or false based
on what you believe? Don’t conclude something based on your point after reading it. be
aware and also match your point of view with the truth.
4. Look at the details

Search the details such as the sources, publication who publish it, and data accuracy.
Go deeper on the sources.. Go deeper on the content. Look out for : byline, is the writer
clearly shown or is it anonymous? Date, key details, “quotes”, image search. You also can
look it on independent fact-checking sites. Can you trace it back to where it first appeared?
5. Take a right actions and reactions
It Can’t be denied, in this digital era, the spread of hoax is very easy to do. But ,
before we had internet, before we are living on this era , hoax still travels faster than the truth.
I think the real problem here is not only on a technologycal level but also on a
psychological and moral level. We as students, should improve our moral and ethicet
towards the technology, wisely digitize digitally, filter articles and news on the internet and
social media, and show our identity as educated people.

Before closing my speech, I’d like to quote one my favourite from Simon Mashalla “I
have never seen a strong and better weapon as truth. When you are honest you will just love
it. People are afraid of the truth because of its sharpness, that’s why they’re liars.” That’s why
people make hoax. Finally,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

That’s all for my speech, I know I may make mistakes, I apologize for it, and I hope
we’ve all learned something new from it and help us to deals with hoax. Thank you very
much for your attenttion. I, You, All of us with hoax, should be break up! Horas!