European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

The more easily people trust a content such as news or memes based only on what they believe in, and ignore the facts, making this issue pivotal to study because of its endangers to the stability and the unity of the Indonesian nation which consists of various ethnicities and religions. With the situation that is inversely proportional between the use of smartphones and media literacy owned, this research eager to uncover how people read political memes and what kind of factors influence them. This study uses a qualitative approach that rests on an critical paradigm with a digital ethnographic method implemented through an instrument in the form of a Focus Group Discussion. This is intended to understand the behavior of various backgrounds of people who are active in cyberspace, especially in reading political memes produced by Agan Harahap. The result of this research reveals that in reading visuals including political memes, there is a tendency to be influenced by political affiliation, religion, ethnicity, and culture over objective truth. Sensitive issues related to these things are able to create a movement that involves the masses. Increasing media and digital literacy, not only technically expert both in hardware and software, but also fully understanding the content before commenting and sharing it, in order to encourage media prosumer to be critical in responding to the era of partisanship and distrust or what is widely referred to as the post truth era.