Strategy: Digital Democracy

The purpose of this grant is to support the Digital Disinformation Research and Mapping Project, which will track and aggregate ongoing research, facilitate the alignment of research with relevant policy efforts, and build a diverse and multidisciplinary scholarly network.

To support the efforts of Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute in conducting research around the role of misinformation on social media platforms during the 2018 election season and publishing relevant findings.

To support research and writing on the topic of platform accountability at the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law.

The purpose of this grant is to support the Digital Democracy Project in developing institutional capacity for policy development that addresses the role of platforms in our democracy.

This grant will support the Social Science Research Council’s research on media and democracy, cutting across two areas of their existing work- Anxieties of Democracy and Digital culture. The grant will support cross-sector convenings and research about the role of media in democracy and the development of communications tools to provide resources to help media better serve democratic ends.

To support the Wesleyan Media Project in their work to organize data to hold platforms accountable to the American public and to advance America’s democratic promise. This grant will fund research and scholarship into how best to collect and publish data regarding political advertising on platforms, with a focus on ads that involve race and gender.

This grant will support the development and testing of Hoaxy Bot-o-Meter, a tool to uncover attempts to boost the spread of misinformation online. Hoaxy Bot-o-Meter will uncover and display how information from such questionable sources is generated and rebroadcasted.

To support the Wesleyan Media Project, a project of Wesleyan University, in their work to organize data to hold platforms accountable to the American public and advance America’s democratic promise. This grant will fund research and scholarship into how best to collect and publish data regarding political advertising on platforms, with particular interest on ads that involve race and gender.

To obtain and analyze digital ad data from digital platforms and to translate it into a more accurate, useful dataset for partners. Ultimately, this work would lead to a more comprehensive and accessible data source for the press and public.

To support the Center for Media Justice (CMJ) in their work to create a new deal for the digital age with a focus on racial and gender equity. This grant will support CMJ’s involvement in the Change the Terms coalition, with a focus on using educational events, corporate accountability actions, and cultural strategies to shift corporate practices and policies to eliminate white supremacist hate speech from platforms and strengthen civil rights protections for people of color.