Funding Partners

This core support from the Ford Foundation allows us to (i) advance our investigations of the role of digital media in spreading disinformation and propaganda on public life and (ii) expand our research to cover the new ways in which algorithms, data mining, social media, and machine learning systems perpetuate social inequality or extend state surveillance and censorship.  Our recent rebrand captures this broadening focus, as we move from being a project focused on computational propaganda to a program addressing multiple issues in democracy and technology. We are particularly interested in going beyond English-speaking countries and collaborating and networking with social justice organizations outside North America and Europe. We still have significant opportunities for engagement in the US and European Union and will put those partnerships to work for our shared global agenda. Here we identify our priorities for rigorous, independent, and public-interest research going forward.

Vaccination efforts and public understanding of health will be crucial to building back better, and DemTech’s (formerly Comprop) research has significantly advanced understanding of the “anti‐vaccination” movement and how to respond to it. This grant from the Oxford Martin School will enable us to build on our existing data science infrastructure to (a) understand the extent to which credible public health information is outweighed by false content on social media and (b) measure the effectiveness of public health communication responses in real-time with the aim of (c) advising the University, HMG, and the NHS on how to use social media to deflate anti‐vaxx misinformation and promote public understanding of both the vaccination and health guidelines.

Craig Newmark Philanthropies provide core support for DemTech’s (formerly Comprop) work on the causes, consequences, and policy solutions for the manipulation of public life in the US. The program of activities will (1) track influence campaigns on social media applications during the 2020 US election cycle from primaries into the first 100 days of the next term, (2) build capacities to detect “deep fakes” and other forms of visual disinformation, and (3) provide regular consultations to public officials, news outlets and civil society groups on the wider ecosystem of disinformation, voting and the election outcomes. This support will help to turn our investigative work into high‐impact policy guidance, and will be used to sustain long‐term relationships with policymakers and journalists who depend on us for insight. This proposal is for core support for our initiatives in countering disinformation in the United States through 2021.

Support from the Open Society Foundations, enables the DemTech (formerly Comprop) team to successfully work towards accomplishing their declared goals. For their research and impact work, they have set three goals: (1) track misinformation campaigns during elections, referenda and lobbying campaigns, (2) develop new analytical tools for investigating how social media is used to manipulate public opinion, and (3) provide regular support and consultations to the public agencies and independent journalists seeking help.  

Increasingly, social media platforms have become tools for manipulating public opinion during elections. Political actors make use of technological proxies in the form of proprietary algorithms and semi-automated social actors—political bots—in subtle attempts to manipulate public opinion. Core support from the Ford Foundation enables the DemTech (formerly Comprop) team to audit the practices and algorithms of major social media platforms, and to raise public understanding of the role of algorithms in public life by both building tools that the public can use and working with journalists to expose the operations behind such manipulation.

Civitates support enables the DemTech (formerly Comprop) team to 1. improve our capacity to study computational propaganda at the cutting-edge of technological innovation and artificial intelligence; 2. strengthen our capacity to identify solutions to vulnerabilities and flaws in digital information ecosystems 3. support impactful policymaking with research based evidence in an effort to promote public interests and democratic values in the EU. We will accomplish our vision through a three-part strategy that will innovate our real-time data science capacity to study state-of-the-art information ecosystems and sustain goal-oriented public debate. We want to (i) track influence campaigns and viral misinformation and their relationship to algorithmic information ecosystems including encrypted chat apps during critical moments of public life; (ii) investigate the evolution of misinformation over “deepfake” video & images; (iii) provide insight to European institutions and organizations to help counter the effects of such campaigns.

Support from Fondation Nicolas Puech will advance research on the impact of technology on public life, and support the OII to engage with policy makers, journalists, and civil society groups. Focusing on the DemTech (formerly Comprop) team’s activities, including their work investigating how bots, algorithms and other forms of automation are used by political actors in countries around the world. Their work includes analysis of how tools like social media bots are used to manipulate public opinion by amplifying or repressing political content, disinformation, hate speech, and junk news.

Support from the William + Flora Hewlett Foundation grant will allow creation of a dedicated US Election Observatory to track political polarization through the use of algorithms, automation, and junk news. DemTech (formerly Comprop) at the OII will develop (1) an investigative program into computational propaganda and political communication during critical moments—such as elections, security crises, and polarizing debates—in the US, and (2) a policy program to increase OII’s ability to assist policy makers, journalists, and the interested public in understanding how new information technologies impact public life. This support will deepen OII’s research capacity, provide the flexibility to investigate changing technologies, and sustain relationships with the US institutions and organizations that depend on the OII for insight.

Support from the Adessium Foundation is for a two-part programme, including (1) an investigative programme, observing computational propaganda and political communication during critical moments—such as elections—in Europe, and (2) a policy engagement programme, to increase our capacity to influence global policy makers, journalists, and other investigators, and to help transfer knowledge and responsive-capacity to a wider network of policy makers in governments, industry, and civil society. 

The DemTech team was established in January 2016 as the Computational Propaganda Project (Comprop) and the gift from Luminate (then the Omidyar Network) commenced in June 2018.  This support is for a three-part programme of activity that greatly enhances our ability to track trends with regularity, respond rapidly when new opportunities arise, and provide independent research and advice to policy makers and civil society groups.

Microsoft’s support has enabled DemTech (formerly Comprop) to develop a two-part programme, including (1) a research programme, observing computational propaganda and political communication during elections around the world, and (2) a policy engagement programme to increase our capacity to influence global policy makers, journalists, and other investigators, and to help transfer knowledge and responsive-capacity to a wider network of policy makers in governments, industry, and civil society. 

Increasingly, social media platforms have become tools for manipulating public opinion during elections. Political actors make use of technological proxies in the form of proprietary algorithms and semi-automated social actors—political bots—in subtle attempts to manipulate public opinion. Core support from the Ford Foundation enabled the DemTech (formerly Comprop) team to audit the practices and algorithms of major social media platforms, and to raise public understanding of the role of algorithms in public life by both building tools that the public can use and working with journalists to expose the operations behind such manipulation.

Increasingly, social media platforms have become tools for manipulating public opinion during elections. Political actors make use of technological proxies in the form of proprietary algorithms and semi-automated social actors—political bots—in subtle attempts to manipulate public opinion. Through the European Research Council COMPROP Consolidator award, DemTech (formerly Comprop) researchers have demonstrated that even simple bots (i) effectively keep negative messages and fake news in circulation longer, (ii) target journalists and civil society groups, and (iii) operate with little oversight from social media firms. Such bots have negative consequences both for public trust in technology innovation and for the quality of public deliberation in Europe’s democracies. ERC researchers have been able to identify highly automated, politically-manipulative social media accounts post-hoc, and this Proof of Concept project will allow researchers to take what we have learned and produce an online tool that allows the public to evaluate suspicious social media accounts. Most social media platforms are slow to address troll and bot activity, so this innovative tool will put ERC research into public service in Europe and around the world.

The Open Society Foundations supported the Project on Computational Propaganda (now known as DemTech) team to audit the application of bots and artificial intelligence by political leaders during election campaigns and political crises, with the aim of discovering a) the degree to which political actors can compose directed advertising to citizens during sensitive political moments like elections, b) how bots or fake accounts on Twitter and Facebook amplify such messages to real communities of users.

In this new, three-year programme, researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism will examine the interplay between systematic misinformation campaigns, news coverage, and increasingly important social media platforms for public understanding of science and technological innovation. In some key domains of public life there appears to be coordinated efforts to ruin the reputation of science and innovation. Scientists now protest in the streets just to get policymakers to embrace evidence-based policy making. Long-held consensus on the causes and consequences of climate change, tobacco-induced cancers, and value of public health strategies increasingly seem open for debate. We have political leaders who claim to be unable to discern what expert consensus is—even when experts organize to make explicit statements about levels of confidence and certainty around particular areas of research. Social media platforms have become a powerful venue for those aiming to deflating public support for action based on reliable research, and previously trusted technological innovations come to have negligible impact. In this three-year project, we will examine the interplay between systematic misinformation campaigns, news, and increasingly important social media platforms for public understandings of science and innovation. We aim to increase our understanding of the role of “junk science” and fake news in influencing—or even undermining—public understanding of scientific issues and develop evidence-based recommendations for scientists, journalists, and policymakers interested in effective science communication in the 21st century.

Support from the Open Society Foundations enabled the Project on Computational Propaganda (now known as DemTech) to audit the application of bots, junk news, and artificial intelligence by political leaders during the UK 2017 general election campaigns and political crises, with the aim of discovering a) the degree to which political actors can compose directed advertising to citizens during sensitive political moments like elections, b) how bots or fake accounts on Twitter and Facebook amplify such messages to real communities of users.

Social media can have an impressive impact on civic engagement and political discourse. Yet increasingly we find political actors using digital media and automated scripts for social control. Computational propaganda—through bots, botnets, and algorithms—has become one of the most concerning impacts of technology innovation. Unfortunately, bot identification and impact analysis are among the most difficult research challenges facing the social and computer sciences. DemTech  objectives are to advance a) rigorous social and computer science on bot use, b) critical theory on digital manipulation and political outcomes, c) our understanding of how social media propaganda impacts social movement organization and vitality. This project will innovate through i) “real-time” social and information science actively disseminated to journalists, researchers, policy experts and the interested public, ii) the first detailed data set of political bot activity, iii) a deepened regional expert network able to detect bots and their impact in Europe. DemTech (formerly Comprop) will achieve this through multi-method and reflexive work packages: 1) international qualitative fieldwork with teams of bot makers and computer scientists working to detect bots; 2a) construction of an original event data set of incidents of political bot use and 2b) treatment of the data set with fuzzy set and traditional statistics; 3) computational theory for detecting political bots and 4) a sustained dissemination strategy. This project will employ state-of-the-art “network ethnography” techniques, use the latest fuzzy set / qualitative comparative statistics, and advance computational theory on bot detection via cutting-edge algorithmic work enhanced by new crowd-sourcing techniques. Political bots are already being deployed over social networks in Europe. DemTech (formerly Comprop) will put the best methods in social and computer science to work on the size of the problem and the possible solutions.