source image : gemini generative image

During the 2024 Indonesian presidential election, a survey by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Safer Internet Lab found that more than 42 percent of Indonesians believed at least one piece of disinformation about the election. A separate Databoks survey of 10,000 respondents found that 45 percent of Indonesians were unsure of their own ability to tell false from true information. Indonesia simultaneously ranks among the top five nations globally for social media usage and near the bottom for measured digital and media literacy. The World Economic Forum identified misinformation and disinformation as the top global risks for 2024 — above climate disasters, geopolitical conflict, and economic instability. In this landscape, a credible researcher with a public voice is not a communicator. They are infrastructure.

The disinformation ecosystem in Indonesia is not primarily political, though it is visibly present in elections. Its more persistent and damaging form is in health information, where deep-fake videos misusing clips of public figures to promote unproven medicines routinely outperform legitimate health communication in engagement metrics. It is present in environmental discourse, where climate skepticism and resource extraction narratives circulate largely unchallenged in rural information channels. It is present in financial decision-making, where unverified investment schemes and economic myths spread faster through WhatsApp groups than through any regulated information channel. The researchers with the evidence-based findings that could counter these narratives are, in almost every case, the ones who have chosen not to communicate publicly.

A 2025 analysis in Frontiers in AI-based Disinformation, examining Indonesia’s digital media ecosystem, found that the most effective long-term intervention against disinformation is not fact-checking platforms or content moderation policies — both of which operate reactively after false claims are already viral. It is the systematic presence of credible voices who communicate proactively, consistently, and accessibly on the topics where disinformation is most likely to fill a credibility vacuum. Researchers are precisely those voices. The Indonesia at Melbourne analysis published by the University of Melbourne in August 2024 made the case explicitly: health experts, academic specialists, and researchers must join the information ecosystem as active participants, not passive bystanders waiting to be quoted.

This is not a call for researchers to become activists or to abandon the epistemic standards that make their voices credible in the first place. The argument is the opposite: the credibility that comes from rigorous research methodology, peer review, and institutional affiliation is exactly what is scarce in the current information environment, and it is only exercised when researchers choose to speak. A single factually accurate, clearly written Instagram post from a BINUS nutrition researcher can reach people who will never read the underlying paper — and for many of those people, it is the most credible nutritional information they will encounter that week.

For BINUS lecturers, this argument reframes science communication from an optional career-building activity into something closer to a professional obligation. The university’s research is publicly funded, directly or indirectly, through the institutional infrastructure that makes it possible. That research produces knowledge that the Indonesian public needs — in order to make health decisions, evaluate policy, understand economic conditions, and resist manipulation. The channels to communicate that knowledge publicly already exist. The tools are built. The reporting pathway is clear. What remains is the decision to use them.

RTT’s Downstreaming team exists specifically to lower the threshold for that decision — through training, content support, editorial introductions, and a reporting system that makes every act of public communication count toward institutional and individual KPIs. The argument for science communication has never been stronger, and the infrastructure supporting it at BINUS has never been more complete.

For the full picture of how BINUS supports researchers in communicating their work to the Indonesian public and beyond, visit the Science Communication page at binus.ac.id/techtransfer/science-communication.

#Misinformation #HoaksIndonesia #ScienceComm #ResearcherCredibility #PublicTrust #BINUSResearch #IndonesiaDigital