Biden to shell out nearly $1 million for 'disinformation' dashboard
Joe Biden delivers remarks on the soul of the nation, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022, at Independence Square in Philadelphia. (Official White House photo by Adam Schultz)
By Brandon Poulter
Daily Caller News Foundation
The Biden administration will hand over nearly $1 million to a red state university for the development of computer models that track “misinformation,” “disinformation” and “malinformation” (MDM), according to a grant’s description.
Clemson University in South Carolina is set to receive more than $950,000 from the Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate how MDM propagates on the internet and encourages “violent extremism,” according to a grant’s description. The project aims to create computer models to track “specific accounts” that push MDM and eventually to create a dashboard that tracks them in real time, which could be used by “law enforcement.”
Misinformation is defined as any false or inaccurate information, whereas disinformation is false or inaccurate information intended to deceive. Malinformation is defined as information that is true, but shared to cause harm.
The Hunter Biden laptop was once called misinformation, as well as the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan.
Several questions will be answered by the project, including how the language of MDM presents itself, what kind of events spark these information campaigns and “specific accounts” that perpetuate MDM, according to the grant’s description.
The project will answer these questions by tracking the spread of MDM around major news events through the use of computer models, according to the grant’s description. The project also plans to identify groups of people online who spread MDM.
The results of the project are intended to help policymakers and law enforcement officers, according to the grant’s description.
The Biden administration has funded several organizations that investigate MDM and the groups have often targeted conservatives. Biden’s National Science Foundation (NSF) contributed nearly $39 million to research initiatives to counter MDM from the time of his inauguration to November 2022.
Recipients of NSF funds include Massachusetts Institute of Technology led researchers who received $750,000 to create propaganda tools to educate “broad swaths of the public” who “cannot effectively sort truth from fiction online.” Vulnerable groups included “rural and indigenous communities,” “military veterans, older adults, and military families,” and “older adults.”
One technology nonprofit that tracks “misinformation,” called Meedan, received $5.7 million in 2021 from the NSF. The group has said that distrusting mainstream media is misinformation and said that the claims that testosterone makes you aggressive or that puberty blockers are irreversible are also misinformation.
The U.S. State Department also helped facilitate funding for a group that censors conservatives called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI).
The DOJ and Clemson University did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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