The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public this week announced a new $1 million gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies to support the multidisciplinary research center’s rapid-response research of election-related mis- and disinformation.
“The CIP helps defend our country from people who wish us harm and from those attempting to destabilize our country through relentless disinformation that makes it harder to run a democracy which serves all the people,” said Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. “The folks at the CIP do a great job, helping us all out.”
The funding builds upon a previous gift from Newmark that was instrumental in helping the CIP co-found and stand up the Election Integrity Partnership, a multi-institution consortium of researchers that identified, tracked, analyzed and reported on mis- and disinformation about the 2020 U.S. election. Specifically, the partnership focused on understanding how false, misleading and distorted narratives about voter fraud spread online and off, and functioned to sow doubt in the election results. That work culminated in the March 2021 publication of the Election Integrity Partnership’s nearly 300-page final report, “The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election.”
With this latest gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the CIP will be poised to continue important work to advise journalists, policy makers and social media platforms during the upcoming midterm and presidential elections as well as state and local elections.
“To continue the CIP’s commitment to supporting an informed public and a strong democracy, infrastructure and resources are needed to sustain these rapid response efforts during future elections — to predict and pre-bunk false narratives, detect and study mis- and disinformation as it occurs, and respond to it when appropriate,” said Kate Starbird, a CIP cofounder and UW Human Centered Design & Engineering associate professor. “We’re grateful to Craig Newmark for this transformative investment in the critical work of defending democracy.”
The new funding from Newmark will help the CIP recruit a research scientist to lead the center’s rapid-response work; support CIP student researchers, who will be known as Craig Newmark Fellows; and provide funding for the CIP’s principal faculty guiding and mentoring these students.
“Rapid response to misinformation requires around-the-clock efforts of researchers, journalists, and community leaders,” said Jevin West, the CIP’s inaugural director and UW Information School associate professor. “This funding will help sustain those efforts and create an infrastructural template for other universities and organizations devoted to combating misinformation in real-time.”
Launched in late 2019 with a $5 million founding grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the CIP is a multidisciplinary research center co-founded by UW’s iSchool, School of Law, and Human Centered Design & Engineering department and has a mission to resist strategic misinformation, promote an informed society and strengthen democratic discourse.
In its first year, the CIP, through its research, education, engagement and policy work, helped bring clarity and informed expertise to a confusing time clouded by rampant mis- and disinformation around issues like the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 U.S. elections. Now in its second year and looking toward its third, the CIP’s work continues through efforts like MisinfoDay, an annual misinformation awareness educational program the CIP co-presents through a statewide partnership with Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication; research examining mis- and disinformation in Vietnamese diasporic communities during the 2020 U.S. elections; and multi-institution rapid-response research collaborations like the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project, which has been tracking and responding to COVID-19 vaccine mis- and disinformation.
