Varia Ranah - Sorotan Ilmiah Perkhidmatan Awam

28 Varia Ranah: Sorotan Ilmiah Perkhidmatan Awam PROBLEM STATEMENT Social media is the key platform in the spread of fake news Social media is the latest communication technology that changes how the people communicate. With no controls or checks, it has frequently accused of being the tools of misinformation. The crowd dynamics created by social media allows fake news to spread faster than ever before. The private instant messaging application such as WhatApps, Telegram, WeChat, are increasingly used for sharing and discussing news among themselves. Based on a study by University of Washington, people who consumed news from social media risked being trapped in an “echo chamber” because Facebook tend to feed users news items similar to those they have read before. On Twitter, most of the users in the channel are highly active “bots” users who designed to amplify the reach of fake news that target a broad audience. The bots will create the appearances from any popular campaigns or advertising to manipulate attention, and target users and induce them to share the information. For example, Donald Trump received hundreds of tweets, mostly from bots, with links to the fake news story about three million illegal immigrants voted in the election. Legislation In addressing the issue of fake news, MCMC referred to Communication and Multimedia Act 1998 Section 233 (a) as the primary regulator. However, the current act only focused on technical offense which related to the misuse of networks or computers as part of a crime. This issue became a debate because the existing legislation was not enough to tackle the spread of fake news. There are limited remedies to deal with the threat under the current law specially to prosecute the perpetrator to the court due to lack of evidence and the limitation of the act. There are limited remedies to deal with the threat under the current law specially to prosecute the perpetrator to the court due to lack of evidence and the limitation of the act.