ISG: How did Indonesian voters respond to disinformation and election propaganda?

About the Seminar
During the recent Indonesia’s presidential election campaigns, disinformation and election propaganda narratives were circulated around, including those with AI-generated contents. In this context, Muhtadi and Wihardja (2024) study the prevalence of ‘selective exposure’ and ‘selective belief’ among Indonesian voters in relation to the circulation of disinformation with and without AI-generated contents during the 2024 election campaigns. ‘Selective exposure’ and ‘selective belief’ refer to the phenomena of how voters’ likelihood to hear/read/watch and to believe certain disinformation and election propaganda narratives depend on their partisan beliefs and alignments (Neyazi and Muhtadi, 2021). We show preliminary evidence of ‘selective exposure’ and ‘selective belief’ in how Indonesian voters were exposed to and perceived the veracity of both AI-generated deepfakes and non-AI generated disinformation and election propaganda narratives. While loyal supporters to a presidential candidate may exert personality-based partisan biases when receiving election-related information, disinformation and election propaganda narratives may sway voting preferences of those who were initially undecided or were not loyalists of a presidential candidate (termed as ‘swing voters’). We also show preliminary evidence how beliefs (not necessarily exposure) in certain election propaganda narratives could still sway votes among ‘swing voters’.
Copyright ANU Indonesia Project 2024