THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION ENTERS THE "DISINFORMATION" CONTROVERSY

 

'Serious threat': National Science Foundation spending millions combating one alleged 'problem'

'A new phenomenon with potential for vast harm'

By WND News Services
Published February 19, 2023 at 5:19pm

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By Katelynn Richardson
Daily Caller News Foundation

• The National Science Foundation (NSF) has launched initiatives to fund projects that develop tools and research in the area of combating ‘disinformation.’
• Nearly $40 million has been granted to “misinformation” related projects since the start of the Biden administration, according to the Foundation For Freedom Online.
• One $324,000 grant funds a two-month summer program at Old Dominion University that teaches undergraduates about the field of “disinformation detection and analytics,” preparing them for “disinformation-related jobs.”

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is pouring millions into research and the development of tools to combat online mis- and disinformation, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of agency grants.

TRENDING: Fed-funded nonprofit cutting ties with group blacklisting conservative news

Since the start of the Biden administration, the total NSF dollars spent on “misinformation” related projects have reached $38.8 million, according to a November report by the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO). However, NSF has awarded even more grants to combat mis- and disinformation since the release of FFO’s report, the DCNF found. Most grants reviewed by the DCNF, which are ongoing and have past disbursement dates ranging from July 2019 to Dec. 2022, fall under the “Convergence Accelerator Track F: Trust & Authenticity in Communication Systems” or “Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC).”

The disinformation industry is growing and increasingly used to inform social media platforms content moderation policies, which seem to disproportionately target conservative speech. Last week, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that the U.S. State Department helped fund the “disinformation” monitor Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which the Washington Examiner earlier found maintains a blacklist of conservative media groups and websites rated based on disinformation risk that ad companies in turn utilize to defund.

Aaron Terr, Director of Public Advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told the Daily Caller News Foundation it is “not a far-fetched scenario” to imagine the government using the technology it is funding through NSF to regulate speech.

“The government doesn’t violate the First Amendment simply by funding research, but it’s troubling when tax dollars are used to develop censorship technology,” said Terr. 

“If the government ultimately used this technology to regulate allegedly false online speech, or coerced digital platforms to use it for that purpose, that would violate the First Amendment. Given government officials’ persistent pressure on social media platforms to regulate misinformation, that’s not a far-fetched scenario.”

One of the most recent NSF awards, a $50,000 grant given to the University of Houston on Dec. 20, 2022, seeks to create a “social media misinformation interactive dashboard” that would “forecast trends and analysis to help address the misinformation endemic in America,” according to the grant abstract.

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“Misinformation online may result in people questioning evidence-based medical guidance or refusing safe treatments,” the grant says. “Understanding current misinformation content and trends supports both corporate entities and social media users.”

In August 2020, a $149,858 project was launched at the University of Illinois to examine “the ways that misinformation regarding COVID-19 disseminates through social media and news outlets,” the grant abstract says.

“The ultimate goal is to use machine learning and network analysis tools to provide insight into the locations where misinformation originates and understanding of the mechanisms through which this misinformation spreads,” the abstract says. In order to locate “potentially dubious” information, the researchers test information against “insights from the Centers for Disease Control.”

The estimated end date is July 31, 2023, and the long-term results could be “useful for fighting future pandemics as well as other topics that are vital to the health of the Nation,” according to the grant.

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On July 26, 2019, Syracuse University was awarded a $495,478 grant to study the “online dynamics of misinformation,” focusing on how “misinformation becomes woven into narratives online, how technology influences this process, and how design might be used to alter it.”

“Online misinformation can influence public health attitudes, potentially costing billions of dollars and numerous lives,” the abstract states. “This project will span a series of crowd-based experiments to investigate how people in online networks work together to combine misinformation to create and defend public health narratives.”

A late January report from FFFO highlights censorship tools created at various universities who received $750,000 grants through the NSF’s Convergence Accelerator Track F.

One project funded through a grant awarded on Sept. 20, 2021 to the University of Michigan, WiseDex, uses keywords to automatically flag posts with a “misleading claim” for social media company reviewers to compare against company Terms of Services.

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