Digital Media Literacy in Reading and Understanding Health-Related Information on the Internet and Social Media

This article explains the literacy program conducted by the team from Communication Department, Universitas Diponegoro, in 2019 in Semarang, Central Java, to educate public in reading and understanding health-related information, particularly information about medicine, in the Internet and social media. Research have shown that the Internet and social media have become one of the information sources where people seek their health information. This health information could be related to disease, medicine (drugs), diet (food or nutrition), healthy lifestyle, health facilities, and health financing (insurance, medicine price etc.). The nature of free and unlimited information on the Internet renders distribution of high number of unverified and untested health information among users on social media, which largely known as misinformation, disinformation or misinformation. The target audience of the program is a group of women in a neighborhood in Semarang, who were actively involved in Family Welfare Empowerment program (Pemberdayaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga/PKK) and in managing (Tanaman Obat Keluarga/TOGA) in their neighborhood. The goal of the program is to educate the target audience to be able to understand types of medicine in the market and their characteristics, and to be able to recognize inaccurate information, unverified sources as well as to apply critical thinking to comprehend health information in relation to medicine.