In Indonesia, anti-vaccine messages come with a dose of religion, anti-Chinese sentiment and conspiracy theories
- Recent study says such claims are spread on social media by micro-influencers with a large support base of faithful followers
- Experts warn they could upend Jakarta’s bid to speed up inoculations as Covid-19 cases surge, even as worries grow about the efficacy of Sinovac jabs
The report, written by Yatun Sastramidjaja and Amirul Adli Rosli at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said the amount of anti-vaccine propaganda on social media platforms was “worrying”.
Religious micro-influencers in Indonesia – those with a follower count of between 10,000 and 50,000 – “have the platform, the reach and the content-creating ability to spread their message to a large support base of faithful followers, whose trust in religious role models remains unshaken by censorship”, it said.
The researchers monitored the hashtags #vaksin and #tolakvaksin – which respectively mean “vaccine” and “reject the vaccine” – posted by Indonesian users on TikTok in March and April.
The clip was posted by an account named @adab.ulama, translating to “religious scholar conduct”, which added a “dramatic Islamic song” to the clip of Ribka speaking – resulting in 1.6 million likes, 577,000 comments, and 51,600 shares, the report said. The video was removed by TikTok soon after it topped the list.
02:41
Indonesia hits record daily Covid-19 caseload as total infections pass 2 million
“Like TikTok and other social media platforms, the Indonesian government responds to Covid-19 misinformation by means of censorship and repression,” the researchers said.