Digital Democracy Archives

Press Release

Democracy Fund, Omidyar Network Support Independent, Diverse, and Transparent Analysis of Facebook

Democracy Fund

April 9, 2018

Research Aimed at Identifying Actions and Policies that Affect Elections and Democratic Norms

Washington, D.C. and Redwood City, CA (April 9, 2018) – Earlier today, Facebook announced the launch of a new research initiative that will enable independent researchers to perform an assessment of the role the social platform plays in elections. Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network have joined an effort led by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to support this potentially important step toward addressing how Facebook’s algorithms and vast storehouses of data are shaping elections, the social fabric, and democratic life.

The two organizations’ support is a continuation of the collective work Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network have done to address the unintended consequences of technology and its impacts on democracy. Democracy is under attack from many directions, and the influence social media has on elections is a critical front. While the full extent and impact of the role of malicious domestic actors on the 2016 election remains unknown, it has been verified that social media platforms were misused and that networks including but not limited to Facebook – violated the public’s trust. It’s now incumbent on these platforms to regain trust by urgently implementing technology solutions and supporting policy solutions where appropriate.

Key to finding these solutions will be Facebook’s support of independent, peer-reviewed analyses performed by a diverse committee of academic researchers, including voices who have been disproportionately harmed by social media. In particular, the committee must have diversity across ideology, race and ethnicity, geography, gender, expertise, and life experience. Today’s announcement is a first step in that direction. Notably, the research committee will independently solicit and prioritize research. They will have access to secure, privacy-protected data, which will be critically important in understanding the dynamics and effects of social media on the public square and arriving at informed recommendations about potential solutions. Ultimately, the academics will publish their findings without prior review or approval from Facebook.

The committee is expected to address misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda; polarizing content; promoting freedom of expression and association; protecting domestic elections from foreign interference; and civic engagement. It will answer two critical questions: Does Facebook have the right systems in place to fight misinformation and foreign interference? And how can Facebook help make social media a net positive for democracy?

“Each new story of nefarious actors abusing the platforms – often to foster divisiveness and intolerance – proves just how critical it is that social media companies take responsibility for securing our personal privacy and protecting public debate,” said Tom Glaisyer, managing director of the Public Square Program at Democracy Fund. “If the social media platforms are going to regain the public’s trust and live up to the outsized role they play in our democracy, the platforms must truly prioritize privacy, embrace transparency, and accept accountability. To protect and uphold meaningful rights we need richer, better informed research into the digital public square.”

“At Omidyar Network, we believe that technology can be a massive force for good, but that technologists must take broader responsibility for the implications of their products on society,” noted Paula Goldman, vice president and head of Omidyar Network’s Tech and Society Solutions Lab. “It is urgent that we find solutions that are based on sound analysis, which we cannot do without access to data. We’re hopeful this is first in a series of efforts by platforms to open up their data in a responsible way to help find robust solutions to the problems at hand.”

Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network, both part of The Omidyar Group, are deeply committed to determining how to leverage the potential of technology while addressing its unintended consequences. Late last year, the organizations joined forces to ask “Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy?” identifying six ways in which digital platforms pose direct challenges to democratic ideals. To help address these and other issues, Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network are pursuing multi-pronged strategies to help ensure the public square is vibrant, trusted, and informative in the digital age.

Omidyar Network’s Tech and Society Solutions Lab is designed to test, build, and scale solutions that address the unintended consequences of technology – and, more importantly, help maximize the tech industry’s contributions to a healthy society. For example, the Lab has invested in Tristan Harris, a former Design Ethicist at Google, who co-founded the Center for Humane Technology in part to develop new models for how technology could contribute to individual and public health. The Lab is also partnering with tech, media, and civil society leaders to support a grassroots campaign to create a code of ethics for the data science community to adopt principles of responsible data use and sharing.

Democracy Fund believes the American people must have effective ways to understand and be a part of the democratic process. As the internet transforms political life, it opens exciting new pathways for public engagement while challenging models that used to work. Democracy Fund is deeply committed to solutions that combat hyper-partisanship and ensure that elections have integrity. Some examples of this work include Professor Zeynep Tufekci’s research on algorithmic accountability and the “Eye on Elections” project led by Professor Young Mie Kim. Democracy Fund has also supported a number of specific efforts to address misinformation in news including Politifact, Hoaxy Bot-O-Meter, the Social Science Research Council’s Media & Democracy program, the Documenters Project by City Bureau and more.

All of these projects have the shared goal of increasing the accountability and responsibility of the technology industry and social media platforms. Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network are realistic about the complexities and risks of supporting this effort, but believe it has the potential to be a new avenue through which the public, platforms themselves, and policymakers will be able to better understand the implications of social media for the future of democracy.

***ABOUT DEMOCRACY FUND

Democracy Fund, part of The Omidyar Group, is a bipartisan foundation created by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar to help ensure that our political system can withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. Since 2011, Democracy Fund has invested more than $70 million in support of a healthy democracy, including modern elections, effective governance, and a vibrant public square. To learn more, visit www.democracyfund.org or follow @democracyfund.

ABOUT OMIDYAR NETWORK

Omidyar Network, part of The Omidyar Group, is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. Omidyar Network has committed more than $1.2 billion to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple initiatives, including Education, Emerging Tech, Financial Inclusion, Governance & Citizen Engagement, and Property Rights. To learn more, visit www.omidyar.com, and follow on Twitter @omidyarnetwork #PositiveReturns

CONTACTS:

Jessica Harris
202-448-4503
media@democracyfund.org

Libby Smiley
415-990-314
lsmiley@omidyar.com

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Blog

Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy?

Tom Glaisyer

October 4, 2017

Today The Omidyar Group released a paper co-authored by me and two colleagues at Omidyar Network on the role of social media platforms on democracy and the public square. This paper – called “Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy?” – comes at a moment when there is new scrutiny on the role Facebook, Google, and Twitter played in spreading misinformation and divisive propaganda during the 2016 election. Those debates loom large, however, our analysis goes well beyond any one election to try and understand how social platforms are disrupting core elements of a democratic society.

In June 2017 Facebook raised the question “Is social media good for democracy?” Like them, we have been wrestling with these questions for some time, and while we do not take for granted how these networks provide value to civic life, we are also deeply troubled by the dangers they pose. Their algorithms and their vast storehouses of data gives them fundamentally new capacities abilities to shape discourse, media, and civic and democratic life in American.

As my co-authors – Stacy Donohue and Anamitra Deb – and I reviewed the research of leading voices on this set of issues, we identified six key ways social media is threatening democracy:

Exacerbating the polarization of civil society via echo chambers and filter bubbles
Rapidly spreading mis- and dis-information and amplifying the populist and illiberal wave across the globe
Creating competing realities driven by their algorithms’ intertwining of popularity and legitimacy
Being vulnerable to political capture and voter manipulation through enabling malevolent actors to spread dis-information and covertly influence public opinion
Capturing unprecedented amounts of data that can be used to manipulate user behavior
Facilitating hate speech, public humiliation, and the targeted marginalization of disadvantaged or minority voices

There are no easy answers to the challenges represented above, and any group of potential solutions must account for the diverse interests of multiple stakeholders if we are going to have the public square we deserve. As our founder, ebay creator Pierre Omidyar, wrote today in The Washington Post, “Just as new regulations and policies had to be established for the evolving online commerce sector, social media companies must now help navigate the serious threats posed by their platforms and help lead the development and enforcement of clear industry safeguards. Change won’t happen overnight, and these issues will require ongoing examination, collaboration and vigilance to effectively turn the tide.”

For our part, at Democracy Fund, the potential effects of social media on democracy are closely tied to many lines of our work. This includes longstanding investments on issues ranging from combating hyperpartisanship with constructive dialogue to developing digital election administration tools, and from understanding the impact of fact checking to supporting communities often targeted online. A few examples of this work include:

Politifact, one of the nation’s leading fact checking organizations, has partnered with Facebook to combat the spread of misinformation on the platform.
The Center for Media Engagement, formerly the Engaging News Project, works with newsrooms, social platforms and the public to develop and test ways to make trusted online information more engaging and impactful.
The Coral Project builds open-source tools focused on helping newsrooms build safe, secure and vibrant online communities.

In addition, we supported the Knight Prototype Fund on misinformation earlier this year, which focused on many of these issues. The full list of 20 projects can be found here, but the four projects we funded are:

Viz Lab — Developing a dashboard to track how misinformation spreads through images and memes to aid journalists and researchers in understanding the origins of the image, its promoters, and where it might have been altered and then redistributed across social media.
Hoaxy Bot-o-Meter is a tool created by computer scientists at the Center for Complex Networks to uncover attempts to use Internet bots to boost the spread of misinformation and shape public opinion. The tool aims to reveal how this information is generated and broadcasted, how it becomes viral, its overall reach, and how it competes with accurate information for placement on user feeds.
The Documenters Project by City Bureau creates a network of citizen “documenters” who receive training in the use of journalistic ethics and tools, attend public civic events, and produce trustworthy reports on social media platforms.
The American Library Association is collaborating with the Center for News Literacy to develop an adult media literacy program in five public libraries, focused on how to be a savvy digital citizen in a platform world.

We are going to continue to ask hard questions and support people and organizations who are working to create a robust public square that serves our democracy. We look forward to continuing this work alongside these and other partners. Please email the authors at inquiries@omidyargroup.com if you’d like to discuss how we might work together.

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20 Projects Receive Funding to Combat Misinformation and Build a More Trustworthy Public Square

Josh Stearns

June 22, 2017

The Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund, and Rita Allen Foundation announced today that twenty projects seeking to improve the flow of accurate information will split $1 million to explore and develop early-stage ideas, programs, and prototypes.

In moments of uncertainty and volatility it can be tempting to gravitate towards a single solution to the pressing problem of misinformation and low public trust facing our media, technology, and democracy. However, when it comes to rebuilding the public square and ensuring what is shared is accurate information there are no silver bullets. As such, the projects receiving funding today represent a wide array of ideas and approaches from cognitive psychology and community engagement to computer science and news literacy.

Many of the winners leverage new technology, such as artificial intelligence, to identify and push back on efforts pollute our information ecosystem, while others turned to techniques rooted in education and organizing. Taken together these twenty projects represent a diverse cohort of individuals and institutions who will spend the next nine months grappling with the many questions that surround the role of truth and trust in our media, politics and society.

Out of the twenty total organizations receiving Prototype Fund grants, Democracy Fund supported four specific projects which will each receive $50,000.

Viz Lab (Project leads: Caroline Sinders | San Francisco | @carolinesinders, Susie Cagle | Oakland | @susie_c, Francis Tseng | Brooklyn | @frnsys): Developing a dashboard to track and visualize images and ‘memes,’ as common sources of fake news, to enable journalists and researchers to more easily understand the origins of the image, its promoters, and where it might have been altered and then redistributed.

The Documenters Project by City Bureau (Project lead: Darryl Holliday | Chicago | @d_holli, @city_bureau): Strengthening local media coverage and building trust in journalism by creating an online network of citizen “documenters” who receive training in the use of journalistic ethics and tools, attend public civic events, and produce short summaries that are posted online as a public resource. City Bureau will create and test a field manual to help others replicate the model.

Hoaxy Bot-o-Meter by Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research (Project lead: Filippo Menczer | Bloomington, Indiana | @Botometer, @truthyatindiana): Developing a tool to uncover attempts to use Internet bots to boost the spread of misinformation and shape public opinion. The tool aims to reveal how this information is generated and broadcasted, how it becomes viral, its overall reach, and how it competes with accurate information for placement on user feeds.

Media Literacy @ Your Library by American Library Association in collaboration with the Center for News Literacy (Project lead: Samantha Oakley | Chicago | @ALALibrary, @NewsLiteracy): Developing an adult media literacy program in five public libraries, including a series of online learning sessions, resources, and an in-person workshop to train library workers to help patrons become more informed media consumers.

The other projects include numerous other Democracy Fund grantees and partners working on fact-checking, debunking viral disinformation, and mining digital archives for context. The sixteen other winners are:

Breaking filter bubbles in science journalism by the University of California, Santa Cruz

(Project lead: Erika Check Hayden | Santa Cruz, California @Erika_Check | @UCSC_SciCom): Producing visually-engaging science journalism around topics such as climate change and genetics, to determine whether content delivered by a trusted messenger in a culturally-relevant context has greater reach. The articles will be tested through the digital platform EscapeYourBubble.com, which distributes curated content to users across ideological divides.

Calling Bullshit in the Age of Fake News by the University of Washington (Project lead: Jevin West | Seattle @jevinwest, @UW_iSchool): Developing a curriculum and set of tools to teach students and the public to better assess quantitative information and combat misinformation—with a particular emphasis on data, visualizations, and statistics.

ChartCheck by Periscopic (Project lead: Megan Mermis | Portland, Oregon | @periscopic): Addressing the spread of misinformation through charts, graphs, and data visualizations by fact-checking these resources and publishing results. The team will also build tools to address the spread of these charts on social media and the Internet.

Crosscheck by Vanderbilt University in collaboration with First Draft (Project lead: Lisa Fazio and Claire Wardle | Nashville, Tennessee | @lkfazio, @cward1e, @firstdraftnews, @crosscheck): Using design features to make correct news more memorable, so that people can recall it more easily when faced with false information, using a platform initially developed in France to address misinformation around the French election.

Facts Matter by PolitiFact (Project lead: Aaron Sharockman | St. Petersburg, Florida | @asharock, @PolitiFact): Helping to improve trust in fact-checking, particularly among people who identify as conservative, through experiments including in-person events; a mobile-game that tracks misconceptions about specific facts; diverse commentators who would assess fact-checking reports; and a study of the language used in these reports to determine their effect on perceptions of trustworthiness.

Glorious ContextuBot by Bad Idea Factory (Project lead: Daniel Schultz | Philadelphia | @biffud, @slifty): Helping people become better consumers of online audio and video content through a tool that provides the original source of individual clips and identifies who else has discussed it on the news.

Immigration Lab by Univision News (Project lead: Ronny Rojas | Miami | @ronnyrojas, @UniNoticias): Engaging undocumented immigrants on issues that affect their lives by creating a reliable news resource to help them access and gather information. The project team will do on-the-ground research in communities with a high percentage of undocumented immigrants and learn about their media literacy skills, news consumption habits and needs, and trusted information sources.

KQED Learn by KQED (Project lead: Randall Depew | San Francisco | @randydepew, @KQEDEdSpace): Encouraging young people to ask critical questions that deepen learning and improve media literacy through KQED Learn, a free online platform for students and teachers that reveals ways to ask good questions, investigate answers and share conclusions.

News Inequality Project by Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram (Project leads: Hamdan Azhar, Cathy Deng, Christian MilNeil, and Leslie Shapiro | Portland, Maine | @HamdanAzhar, @cthydng, @c_milneil, @lmshap, @pressherald): Developing a web-based analytics dashboard to help media organizations and community organizers understand how – and how often – different communities are covered in news outlets over time.

News Quality Score Project (Project lead: Frederic Filloux | Palo Alto, California | @filloux): Creating a tool to surface quality journalism from the web, at scale and in real-time, through algorithms and machine learning. The tool will evaluate and score content on criteria ranging from the notoriety of authors and publishers to an analysis of various components of the story structure.

NewsTracker.org by PBS NewsHour and Miles O’Brien Productions (Project lead: Cameron Hickey | Washington, D.C. | @cameronhickey, @newshour) : Developing a tool that combines online news content with engagement data from social media and other sources to help journalists and others better understand the scale, scope, and shape of the misinformation problem. The tool will enable content analysis by gathering data about what is being written, by whom, where it is distributed, and the size of the audience consuming it.

Putting Civic Online Reasoning in Civics Class by Stanford History Education Group/Stanford University (Project lead: Sam Wineburg | Stanford, California | @SHEF_Stanford, @samwineburg): Creating professional development resources for teachers to become better consumers of digital content, in addition to classroom-ready materials that they can use to help students find and assess information online.

Social Media Interventions by Boston University (Project lead: Jacob Groshek | Boston | @jgroshek, @EMSatBU): Experimenting with the effectiveness of real-time online interventions, such as direct messages to users who post or share false information, with people who are sharing known misinformation online.

Veracity.ai (Project lead: Danny Rogers | Baltimore, Maryland): Helping to curb the financial incentives of creating misleading content with automatically-updated lists of “fake news” websites and easy-to-deploy tools that allow ad buyers to block, in bulk, the domains where misinformation is propagated.

Who Said What by Joostware (Project lead: Delip Rao | San Francisco | @deliprao, @joostware): Helping people more easily fact-check audio and video news clips with a search tool that annotates millions of these clips and allows users to explore both what is said and the identity of the speaker.

Technical Schema for Credibility by Meedan in collaboration with Hacks and Hackers (Project lead: Xiao Mina | San Francisco | @anxiaostudio, @meedan, @hackshackers): Creating a clear, standardized framework to define the credibility of a piece of content, how conclusions about its credibility were reached, and how to communicate that credibility effectively.

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News Integrity Initiative: Building a More Trustworthy Public Square

Paul Waters

April 4, 2017

Josh Stearns co-authored this piece with Paul Waters.

At the Democracy Fund we believe that a healthy democracy depends on a vibrant and trustworthy public square. At a time of deep partisanship and threats to democratic ideals and institutions, media have a powerful role to play informing the public and helping bridge the differences we face in our communities, and our nation. However, the erosion of trust in journalism raises profound challenges for a democracy that depends on an open marketplace of ideas, vibrant civil debate, and a press that holds all leaders accountable.

We joined the News Integrity Initiative because we understand that trust is a complex issue and that it demands a diversity of approaches.

The News Integrity Initiative, a project by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, is focused on helping people make informed judgments about the news they read and share online. By funding applied research and convening meetings with industry experts, the Initiative will work to advance news literacy, increase trust in journalism around the world, and better inform the public conversation.

We are excited to join others in supporting a range of people, practices, and ideas to rebuild new kinds of relationships between communities and newsrooms. There is no silver bullet to solve all concerns around trust in media, but we want to roll up our sleeves and work with others who are committed to asking hard questions and seeking out workable solutions to complicated problems.

At the Democracy Fund, we bring to this work a deep commitment to local news, community engagement, and diversity in media. We know that trust looks different in different communities, and that trust is often nuanced, contextual, and shifting. Part of how we got here today is through self-inflicted wounds by an industry that hasn’t always served the needs of everybody in America. And we are aware that issues of trust in media are not new for many communities who have been left out, misrepresented, and hurt by media coverage throughout our nation’s history. We want to work with people in big cities and small rural communities, on the coasts and in the heartland, and in red and blue states across the country.

While these issues have been in the spotlight recently, the erosion of trust in journalism is part of broader shifts in how people relate to institutions across our democracy. The ongoing economic challenges facing the press today demand new ideas about the role the public in supporting and sustaining the press. We are encouraged by the News Integrity Initiative’s emphasis on putting people at the center of the discussion about trust.

Jeff Jarvis, the director of the Tow Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY, which will administer the fund, wrote that he wants “to explore this issue from a public perspective ,” arguing that news literacy shouldn’t be “just about getting the public to read our news but more about getting media to listen to the public.” To that end, we need newsrooms that are deeply engaged with their communities and we need active citizens who are equipped and empowered as creators, consumers, and collaborators.

We look forward to working with the News Integrity Initiative and organizations across the country to catalyze efforts to put people at the center of American journalism and do the hard work of building a more trustworthy public square for all.

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Press Release

Democracy Fund & First Look Media Announce $12M+ in New Grants to Support Free Press

Democracy Fund

March 25, 2017

Washington, D.C. – Today First Look Media and Democracy Fund announced more than $12 million in new grants to support an independent, robust free press. Three leading nonprofit news organizations – the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity, and ProPublica – will each receive $3 million at a moment when the role of journalism in our democracy is facing unprecedented challenges.

These three grants, which are a collaboration between First Look Media and Democracy Fund, will help ensure journalists have the resources they need to meet the reporting challenges of today’s political landscape. The two organizations are also granting $500,000 to the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University to expand accountability reporting collaborations between university students and professional journalists, and $275,000 for an innovative collaboration between Professor Jay Rosen at New York University and De Correspondent to test new models of community support for investigative reporting.

“A healthy democracy cannot exist without a vibrant public square in which hard-hitting, independent media inform the public and hold power accountable,” said Democracy Fund President Joe Goldman. “Investigative journalists play a crucial role in our political system. We hope this support extends the reach and depth of a remarkable set of nonprofit newsrooms at a pivotal moment in American history.”

Democracy Fund and First Look Media share a strong commitment to and belief in the critical role of the First Amendment; both organizations were created by philanthropist Pierre Omidyar.

“At First Look Media, we speak truth to power and tell the stories that matter — across our fearless journalism, films, TV, and digital,” said Michael Bloom, President of First Look Media. “We are thrilled to make these grants to others in our field who are also doing such important work during these critical times.”

First Look Media and Democracy Fund also independently announced additional grants today.

Democracy Fund announced an $800,000 grant to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to help ensure investigative journalists have the legal support and First Amendment protections necessary to pursue their work. Building on its ongoing commitment to transforming local news, Democracy Fund also announced the forthcoming establishment of a new fund for local and state investigative reporting, with an initial investment of $1 million. Democracy Fund is inviting other funders to join them in building a new resource to support state and local reporting; more information will be made available in the coming months. Democracy Fund also contributed $200,000 to the Knight Prototype Fund on trust in journalism.

“National and local nonprofit newsrooms are playing an increasingly important role and building new models for reporting through creativity, collaboration, and civic engagement,” said Tom Glaisyer, Public Square Program Director, Democracy Fund. “In so doing, they bring new people into journalism, highlight new voices, and tell fuller and deeply relevant stories.”

Since 2011, Democracy Fund has invested more than $18 million in support of a more vibrant public square, which includes efforts on local journalism, fact-checking, and newsroom diversity.

First Look Media is providing a grant of $550,000 over two years to support The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. This grant will support investigative reporting on Wall Street and on environmental issues for The Intercept. The Investigative Fund, an award-winning newsroom for independent journalists, incubates investigative reporting projects with the potential for social impact and publishes this work in editorial partnership with a wide variety of print, broadcast, and digital outlets.

“Reporters are facing unprecedented challenges in the current political environment, which demands bold, intensively researched journalism that simply is not possible in most newsrooms without outside support,” said Betsy Reed, Editor-in-Chief of The Intercept.

Democracy Fund and First Look Media will announce all the grants tonight at the Toner Prize Celebration honoring the work of the late Robin Toner, the first woman to be chief political correspondent for The New York Times. The event benefits the Toner Program in Political Reporting at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School.

Democracy Fund and First Look Media Joint Grants, Total $9,775,000

The Center for Investigative Reporting, $3 million over two years – This grant provides general operating support to CIR as they pioneer new models of investigative reporting rooted in collaboration, community engagement, and creativity.
The Center for Public Integrity, $3 million over two years – This grant provides general operating support to CPI to expand its watchdog reporting and strengthen its ability to hold institutions accountable to the American people.
ProPublica, $3 million over two years – This grant provides general operating support to ProPublica, whose groundbreaking work combines hard-hitting investigations and cutting edge data journalism in service to communities.
The Investigative Reporting Workshop, $500,000 over two years – This grant provides general operating support to the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University to deepen its model of accountability reporting, which fosters collaboration between students, professional journalists, and longstanding newsrooms.
New York University, $275,000 over one year – This grant will establish a laboratory for community-supported investigative reporting through a unique partnership between New York University and De Correspondent. The project will focus on developing sustainable business models for U.S. newsrooms rooted in new membership structures and draw on the lessons from a world leader in community-driven accountability journalism.

Democracy Fund Grants, Total $2 million

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, $800,000 over two years – This grant provides general operating support to the Reporters Committee to enhance its ability to provide legal resources and guidance for independent journalists and nonprofit news outlets, in addition to continuing its work with longtime partners in broadcast, print, and online news media.
State and Local Investigative Fund, $1 million initial investment – With this funding, Democracy Fund seeks to establish a new fund for state and local investigative journalism and invites other funders and donors to contribute and collaborate. The goal of the fund is to serve as a beacon for those who want to support local and state news, investigative beats, and nonprofit newsrooms.
Knight Prototype Fund on Misinformation, $200,000 over one years – Democracy Fund also contributed $200,000 to the Knight Prototype Fund’s $1 million open call for ideas on misinformation and trust in journalism, a partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Rita Allen Foundation; the open call is accepting applications until April 3.

First Look Media Grant, Total $550,000 over two years

This grant supports a partnership between The Intercept & the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute for investigative reporting on Wall Street and on environmental issues.

About FIRST LOOK MEDIA:

A bold, independent spirit defines everything we do at First Look Media – from journalism that holds the powerful accountable, to art and entertainment that shape our culture. Launched by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, First Look Media is built on the belief that freedom of expression and of the press, diverse voices, and fiercely independent perspectives, are vital to a healthy democracy and a vibrant culture.

About DEMOCRACY FUND:

The Democracy Fund is a bipartisan foundation established by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar to help ensure that our political system can withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. Since 2011, Democracy Fund has invested more than $50 million in support of effective governance, modern elections, and a vibrant public square.

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Announcing a New Fund to Fight Misinformation

Tom Glaisyer

March 12, 2017

Misinformation, hoaxes, and propaganda are nothing new, but the internet and new technology have made it easier than ever to create and share viral deceptions. The spread of fake information and false stories erodes trust in our democratic institutions and fans the flames of hyper-partisanship.

However, those same tools also give us new opportunities to combat and debunk bad information, and help deliver accurate and trustworthy journalism to more people than ever.

That is why today a coalition of foundations including Democracy Fund, Knight and Rita Allen Foundations are launching a joint fund to support creative ideas to address the question: how might we improve the flow of accurate information?

Democracy Fund is committed to supporting innovative people and ideas that help combat viral deception and reinvigorate trust in the press. We hope this prototype fund sparks creativity and collaboration to ensure our political system is able to deliver on its promise to the American people. We expect to award up to $1 million in grants with an average size of about $50,000. Each grant comes with a two-day training on building and evolving ideas through prototyping.

We understand that these are profoundly complex issues and that people negotiate trust, navigate information, and seek out context in very different ways. We don’t believe there is any one silver-bullet, but instead want to engage a diverse set of stakeholders around these problems. We welcome early stage projects from engineers and educators, librarians and lawyers, and reporters and researchers, and more. Good ideas can come from anywhere so we’ll be reaching out to communities and local newsrooms all across the country—in both rural and urban areas, through red states and blue states, on the coasts and from the middle of the country.

The deadline is April 3rd at 5pm ET. Click here to read a FAQ for more information or apply today.

In the press release today our partner foundations write: “The call is seeking diverse ideas on topics ranging from, but not limited to, the role of algorithms in news consumption, methods for separating facts from fiction, building bridges across ideological divides and strategies for ensuring journalism organizations are authentic to the communities they serve.”

Democracy Fund is particularly interested in ideas from diverse communities and local newsrooms around the country, where people are exploring how engagement, transparency, and context are helping sort fact from fiction. Those peddling in misinformation have used the Internet to their advantage, but everyday people show that the web can be a powerful tool for truth as well. It’s time to turn the tables.

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Statement

Facebook’s New Fact-Checking Partnership Is An Important Step Toward Fighting “Fake News”

Democracy Fund

December 15, 2016

WASHINGTON D.C. – In recent weeks, concerns about the rise and role of bogus information in public debate elevated the role of social media platforms as information intermediaries. In response to Facebook’s announcement of a new fact-checking partnership, Tom Glaisyer, Director of the Public Square Program at Democracy Fund, which has committed more than $3.5 million in fact-checking, released the following statement:

“Facebook’s new fact-checking partnership represents an important step toward addressing the risks posed by bogus information, or ‘fake news.’ It would be difficult to understate the critical role social platforms play in the media ecosystem today, and ensuring that media institutions are able to engage and inform the public is critical to the strength of our democracy.

“Citizens’ lack of trust in media and journalism is at the core of the current debate about bogus information, and we applaud Facebook’s commitment to build and experiment with new tools and functionality that give users independent, non-partisan information about the accuracy of articles and posts. In partnering with experienced and respected fact-checkers who are members of the International Fact-Checking Network – like the Associated Press, PolitiFact, Factcheck.org, SNOPES, and ABC News – Facebook is working with journalists already on the forefront of regaining the public’s trust in media.

“Democracy Fund is a long-time investor in innovations around fact-checking, and we look forward to seeing how Facebook’s new tool, and others like it, can actively support informed civic engagement.”

Democracy Fund is committed to fighting deception and disinformation that prevents voters from making informed decisions at the ballot box. Our investments in fact-checking have included PolitiFact and research into the efficacy of fact-checking carried out by The American Press Institute.

***