Allie Funk, Kian Vesteinsson and Grant Baker, Guest Contributors
In one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history, information researchers and fact checkers whose work proved crucial to identifying false information during the 2020 U.S. campaign have been under attack. They have faced a wave of lawsuits, subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee, and online vitriol from actors on the right, driven by false characterizations of their work. Changes by key companies like Meta and X, formerly known as Twitter, reduced their ability to study the information space. As a result, disinformation experts in the US now have fewer resources, institutional support, and access to platform data, all of which are necessary to provide the same type of analysis in 2024 that was possible in 2020.
This chilling effect on information research is not an aberration. In a recently released report, Freedom House documented similar attacks across the globe that seek to delegitimize the work of independent researchers and fact-checkers, spelling serious consequences for democracy in the digital age.
No comments:
Post a Comment