Detecting fake news during COVID-19 in Indonesia: the role of trust level

Background: The use of social media as a platform to access news and information has the potential to lead to the spread of fake news in Indonesia. This study aims to (1) understand the trust characteristics in information of Indonesians during COVID-19; (2) identify Indonesians’ ability to detect COVID-19 fake news; and (3) analyze the relationship between people’s trust characteristics in information with regard to COVID-19 information and their ability to detect fake news. Method: An online survey was conducted with 751 Indonesians who use social media to access information about COVID-19. Cultural theory is used to categorize people’s trust characteristics in information, while signal detection theory is employed to identify people’s ability to discriminate between fake and real news. Results: The results showed that 61 of respondents were categorized as having hierarchy trust characteristics. Concerning the detectability of fake news, most respondents could discriminate between fake and real news. Lastly, there was a relationship between trust characteristics in information and bias tendencies in detecting fake news. Conclusions: The respondents have hierarchy trust characteristics, indicating they trusted government information related to COVID-19 issues. The respondents also have high ability to discriminate between fake and real news, even though they tended to miss more errors than identify false alarms when detecting fake news. The findings showed that respondents who had hierarchy and egalitarian characteristics tended to perceive real news as fake news and had a better ability to distinguish fake news compared to other trust characteristics in information. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.