Disinformation Researchers Under Investigation: What’s Happening and Why
A committee led by Republican representative Jim Jordan is investigating researchers who analyze how disinformation spreads. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Researchers who study how disinformation spreads are under investigation in the United States for allegedly helping to censor conservative opinions about COVID-19 vaccines and government elections. Jim Jordan, a U.S. representative for Ohio, is leading the charge against the scientists. He is also one of the Republican leaders who have suggested that the Democrats have stolen the 2020 presidential election from former president Donald Trump, and who have made unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud.
The House of Representatives judiciary committee that Jordan chairs is one of at least three investigating an alleged ‘censorship regime’ that involves academic researchers, US government programmes designed to counter disinformation and social-media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook. The committees have sent out letters demanding communications and records from numerous scientists and institutions — in some cases under threat of legal action. In parallel, a cadre of activist groups and Republican-led states that challenged the 2020 election results have launched lawsuits against the administration of President Joe Biden, as well as against individual researchers.
In response to one such suit, on 4 July, a federal judge in Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction barring US agencies from interacting with social-media companies, with the purpose of “urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing” them to remove content. The order by judge Terry Doughty, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, also banned federal agencies from working with disinformation researchers.
We have seen this playbook before, says Rebekah Tromble, who leads the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Many climate scientists, for instance, have been targeted by legal actions and information requests from conservative activists and leaders. “This is a practice that is going to touch more and more researchers’ lives.”
Nature spoke to scientists and university officials about the origins of these investigations, and looks at what might come next for disinformation research.
Why are these researchers being targeted?
Several US research groups have been trying to understand how falsehoods spread on social media and elsewhere. This includes everything from inaccuracies about vaccines and COVID-19 to elaborate conspiracy theories such as QAnon, an evolving narrative that started with the allegation that powerful Democrats were trafficking and abusing children.
This research was thrust into the spotlight after Trump and his supporters began raising questions about voter fraud before the 2020 election — and then refused to accept the results, when Trump lost to President Joe Biden. Ahead of the election, a coalition of research groups had formed the Election Integrity Partnership, with the goal of tracking falsehoods and disinformation about the event. The organization promoted communication with election officials, government agencies, advocacy groups and social-media companies, some of which had developed their own rules to slow the spread of disinformation. The researchers would notify the companies when they encountered false claims.
After Trump supporters marched on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, threatening legislators as they were preparing to certify the 2020 election results, Twitter took down the accounts of Trump and some 70,000 users who had promoted disinformation about the election being stolen and other conspiracy theories. Most of those accounts were linked to the extreme political right, which has fed into the suggestion by Jordan and others that conservative voices have been censored.
Disinformation researchers followed up on their election work with the Virality Project, which was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic to track disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. It has also encountered political backlash, because conservatives have questioned pandemic policies and jab safety.
Actions taken against conservatives do not prove that there is a systematic effort to put their views at a disadvantage, says Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University. Barrett studies the social-media industry and its effects on democracy. If anything, he says, his research shows that social-media companies “have repeatedly bent over backwards to accommodate conservatives who break their rules, because they are afraid of the backlash”.
Former Twitter executives have said as much in congressional testimony. For instance, they pointed out that, in 2019, Twitter changed a rule that was intended to prevent the denigration of immigrants, to accommodate a Trump tweet attacking several liberal — and minority — lawmakers. Twitter officials have denied being pressured or coerced by the US government to remove content.
Officials with the House judiciary committee did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Nature.
So researchers who study conspiracy theories say they are now being drawn into one. How did it start?
The idea of a coordinated censorship regime originated last year from a series of reports by the Foundation for Freedom Online, a self-described watchdog organization set up by a former US State Department diplomat. Conservative billionaire Elon Musk added fuel to the idea when he released internal Twitter files to a few writers after purchasing the company in 2022. Those files revealed the firm’s deliberations about content rules, as well as communications pertaining to Twitter’s ‘partnership’ with the FBI, security agencies and other outside organizations, including academic groups studying disinformation.
Republicans launched their investigations this year, after taking control of the US House of Representatives in the mid-term elections, but they have yet to release any formal reports documenting their findings. For Barrett, the picture that emerges from documents and testimony thus far is that of a big and powerful social-media industry that is constantly struggling with the difficult task of refereeing facts and policing potentially dangerous content.
“They make mistakes and have to correct themselves on a regular basis,” he says. “All of that, to me, seems like the product of a highly imperfect technology, as opposed to a partisan campaign.”
The Foundation for Freedom Online did not respond to requests for comment.
What do scientists say about being investigated?
Nature has reached out to numerous researchers who study disinformation, and most are trying to keep their heads down, either because they are already in the congressional spotlight or would like to avoid attracting it.
One scientist familiar with the situation expressed a sense of frustration, saying that there is no way to counter the conspiracy theory suggesting they were part of an effort to censor conservative voices. They point out that researchers ran their studies openly and in full view of the public, and question why the judiciary committee is conducting its investigation behind closed doors, instead of allowing scientists to testify publicly about their work and their findings.
“I don’t think they want public testimony, because they don’t want those optics,” says the scientist, who requested anonymity so they could speak freely. “It’s political retaliation,” they say, and there is little that the individual researchers who are being targeted can do to fight back.
The investigations and accusations are taking a particular toll on scientists who have been singled out publicly, says Jeff Hancock, faculty director at Stanford University’s Internet Observatory in California, one of the leading institutions in both the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project. He adds that Stanford is still negotiating with Congress over how it will turn over relevant records; in particular, the university wants to protect student researchers who have also been targeted by the congressional letters.
Although the university is standing behind its researchers, Hancock worries about the future. “Understanding misinformation is important for a healthy democracy,” he says. “If you are a young researcher, and you’re watching this taking place, I think that can weigh on your decision about whether you want to do this research.”
This article was published by Nature.
