Dissemination

After having considerations about how to respond to the incident, the following phase was dissemination. During this stage, crisis participants spread out the information they had to their peers. For the incident-related actors group, there were two kinds of information that they disseminated, information about themselves and regarding the event. All incident-affected participants also mentioned that they shared the information about themselves to calm their family and friends down. They let their inner circle knew whether they were fine, where they were at the time of the incident, what they were doing, and so on. I4 who was a survivor from a bombing attack said that because of the incident he got a lot of phone calls or messages from his relatives or friends on his mobile instant messengers or even from his social media, asking about his condition. Thus, he told them that he was fine in order to make them less worried. All participants utilized mobile online messenger, particularly WhatsApp and Line to inform their conditions to their relatives and friends. Additionally, four of seven participants broadcasted that they were safe using Crisis Response feature on Facebook (see Figure 8) due to its ability to reach wider audience,

DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.IMICS.006.2018.F05 including their friends whom they did not often personally contact with. One of them also tweeted about her condition on Twitter as she considered Twitter convenient to use.

Figure 8. Crisis response feature on Facebook.

Apart from sharing about their own condition, 71% of incident-related that they passed on the incident-related information, such as telling that there was a bombing attack, how the condition of the traffic in their neighborhood, sharing news articles about the bombing incident, and so on, to their family members and friends through mobile instant messengers. The incident-related actors only talked about surface information and did not go in depth. They considered sharing information was important as they were close to the location of the bombing. I5, a 27 year-old affected resident whose house was very close to the KM bus station, said that she was really frightened by the bombing attack as the incident was in her neighborhood. Therefore, she thought that informing other people about the event was important to warn other people not to come or to get closer to the area.

The incident-related actors also mainly communicated through mobile online messengers.

Most of them did not share the information to wider circles through open social media platform because there had been a lot of information circulated in the public space, thus they deemed it unnecessary to spread more information related to the event to their weak ties via open social

DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.IMICS.006.2018.F05 media platforms, for instance Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. I1, a 26-year-old sales manager, expressed “Because it’s already very viral, everybody knows. I didn’t see myself need to spread the information anymore because I think it’s already everywhere all over the place.” Furthermore, they did not consider themselves as a credible news source so that inhibited them from circulating information on open social media platforms. When being asked why she avoided to disseminate information in the open platforms, I6, 26 years old, doctor, answered:

Because I’m afraid to say something wrong on social media. If it’s on WhatsApp, it seems like more private, the probability of people misunderstands it is not as big as on Instagram or Twitter. I also don’t have the courage to share the news that I don’t know whether it’s right or wrong. Then even if I share, I only want to share the news article. I’m not brave enough to share my own personal insights.

In addition, I5 and many other incident-related actors believed that sharing photos and videos about the bombing attacks should be avoided. I1, a 26-year-old sales manager, said that she received photos of the victims on her WhatsApp group chat and she got really scared, besides she thought it was inappropriate:

There were a lot of disturbing information and disturbing pictures going through mobile messengers. If you ever heard pictures of the head of the terrorist right after exploded… I saw very a disturbing picture of his head on the TransJakarta busway right after the event.

Somebody took that picture and made it viral and those kind of information, I don’t think that’s appropriate for anyone.

Knowing that it was a horrible experience to get exposed with those graphic contents, I1 and other incident-related actors refrained themselves from spreading photos and videos. Only one of them shared a video on WhatsApp. I3, a friend of a survivor, sent her mother an amateur video which recorded the explosion of the bomb, to show her mother that the terrorist attacks really occurred.

For the digital participant group, 57% participants claimed that they disseminated information related to the event to others. They let their friends and family members knew that there was a bombing attack, shared the link of articles about the bombing attack, and so on. For

DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.IMICS.006.2018.F05 some digital participants, like D1, a 32-year-old officer who resided and worked in Jakarta, spreading information about terrorism was important. He described terrorism as a dangerous issue because, “we don’t know when they (the terrorists) want to attack us and where.” Furthermore, previously having several experiences of bombing attacks, he knew how chaotic and uncertain the situation was, and therefore he wanted to calm other people by sharing information “I already experienced how confusing the information was during the Thamrin terrorist attack (a terrorist attack occurred in Jakarta on 2016). I don’t want other people to encounter the same thing”.

In contrast with the incident-related actors group, the digital participants shared not only textual information that they obtained from news outlets, but also pictures or videos related to the incident, including the condition of the victims on their social media. There were two platforms utilized to disseminate the information: WhatsApp and Twitter. D2, a 30-year-old entrepreneur, stated that he used WhatsApp to share the photos or videos of the victims as he had some group chats on this platform, therefore it was more convenient to distribute the photos and videos. The main purpose of sharing this photos and videos was to inform other people, especially those who lived far away from the location of the bombing attack. Nonetheless, he did not post any of these pictures or videos on his open social media platform because, “Those (the photos and videos) are really scary. There might be people who do not accept this and say ‘Why do you need to share this?’.” However, Twitter was still used to spread the information regarding the bombing attack due to its ability to reach broader and wider audiences. D3, a 25-year-old entrepreneur who passed by the road nearby the location mentioned that she posted photos and video on Twitter regarding the situation of KM that she took by herself. She did that because she wanted to update her Twitter circle about the current situation and to remind the other to be more cautious because she perceived the terrorist attack as a frightening event.

DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.IMICS.006.2018.F05 Dissemination was also crucial for journalists since this was their main responsibility as reporters. However, aside from publishing information through media outlets, the journalists group also utilized dual screening to spread the news for working and personal purposes to their circle, particularly their colleagues, family, and friends. With regard to work purposes, all journalists used WhatsApp to inform their colleagues about the most recent situation. It was necessary to provide the latest update on the group chat to help other journalists in doing their responsibilities. J1, a 25-year-old online news journalist, emphasized the importance of sharing information for working by stating, “Because there are many locations (that we need to cover), not only the location on the bombing attack, but there are also people at the hospital. For instance, there was my friend who shared ‘Oh this minister comes to visit the victim.’ Then, I’m at the bombing location also inform them if the location has been opened, the buses have started to operate again, for example”. Apart from that, the journalists also mentioned that they personally shared the information to their family and friends through mobile instant messengers, such as WhatsApp and Line. Two journalists mentioned that they would not share the information unless their friends or family asked them about the incident. J3, a 26-year-old TV journalists said that she needed to disseminate the information because she was perceived as credible information source by her relatives and friends.

She stated:

In my case, there are my family group chat and other groups chats like people from my church (on WhatsApp) that ask me (about the bombing attack) and they know I am a journalist and they always think I know everything although I am not. So I just give them enough information that I think appropriate and credible. I ask them not to believe the hoax. I am always like that.

On the mobile instant messengers, all journalist shared textual information and one of them also shared pictures of the incident to her friends, but with prior approval. J3 described her experience:

DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.IMICS.006.2018.F05 But I asked them (friends) first, ‘Do you guys want to see the pictures? If you don’t want to see, I will only give you the text.’ ‘Oh yeah, it’s okay.’ I gave them some pictures of the victims, but not the terrible one. If the text, I only sent the press release from the police. I didn’t want (to give) the result of my own writing.

Most journalists also stated that they did not want to post any information regarding the incident through their open social media platform. First, they did not want to generate public panic by circulating more information about the incident. Some journalists mentioned that some information that they received were still under investigation and not verified, hence they were afraid they would mislead the public and engender panic. Second, they also need to maintain their professionalism, for instance, J6, a 2s-year-old TV journalist revealed that “I do not share anything on social media because I do not want to take any risk if the information is wrong, the information is too early, still under investigation. Everything is still speculation”. Moreover, they had published the news about the event through their workplace and they assumed there had been a lot of information circulated already, thus they believed it was unnecessary to disseminate more. Lastly, it was just not their habit to share the information to their social media. However, there were two journalists that stated they posted contents related to the bombing attack on Instagram. One journalist posted a picture of flowers on the location to express his condolence. Another journalist posted photos of the situation on the location and the screenshot of herself when she was on air.