Grants to Study and Mitigate Disinformation are Increasing – Despite Some Opposition
Following the flow of grant money sometimes can spotlight larger shifts in international priorities.
Today, disinformation is a growing threat across the globe. In turn, that has led to increased opportunities for grants, scholarships and other awards designed to help organizations analyze and mitigate the false news threat. Here are some recent examples.
- Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub recently received a $3.8 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to support the Hub’s ongoing study of disinformation and inauthenticity online, and to create tools to educate people and stop the spread of disinformation. Clemson will match the grant, channeling a total of $7.6 million to the effort.
- Google and YouTube have partnered with the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network, providing a grant of $13.2 million to support the Institute’s global fact-checking community. This is a high profile, multinational effort to address disinformation that’s often orchestrated by well-organized bad actors.
- The National Science Foundation is providing over $576,000 to three professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The money will be used to identify ways to address science-related misinformation and misperceptions in black communities. The effort will include understanding how and why such information is promoted, and to develop “culturally competent and responsive communication about science-related issues.”
Clearly, disinformation has become a hot-button issue in various grant programs, and more funding is becoming available to address it. A quick check on Grants.gov this week turned up over 40 grant opportunities that mention disinformation as part of the grant title or description.
Other funding efforts have been established to focus on the legal expenses associated with fighting disinformation. This month the Nebraska Legal Action Fund was launched. It’s a state-wide coalition of lawyers, educators and advocates whose stated aim is to use “all the legal tools at our disposal to protect Nebraskans and expose extremists, their tactics and misinformation.”
Libraries play a role too. The vice president of government relations for the California School Library Association recently wrote an article stressing that funding school libraries is a preemptive move against misinformation.
But there are other groups seeking to limit disinformation-focused grant funding, by monitoring and spotlighting government grants that may be aimed at supporting the evaluation and mitigation of disinformation. For example, on Dec 6, 2022, the America First Legal Foundation (helmed by Stephen Miller, a former senior advisor to President Trump) announced it has filed multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to “grant awards to organizations deeply involved in online content moderation.” Miller’s group paints disinformation monitoring efforts as a First Amendment issue, because they believe it could limit some topics and discussions.
For the next few years, those who award disinformation-focused grants will need to walk a careful path if they want to dampen disinformation without appearing to limit debate and alternative voices. Thus their efforts will need to focus on projects that support fact-based information gathering and building effective solutions based on those facts. That will need to be done without appearing to have a conflict of interest or support for a specific political orientation.
That’s not an easy task. But with today’s growing trend toward coordinated global propaganda campaigns – it’s clearly a necessary one.
