The disinformation war has taken a toll, but researchers feel a shift

Leila Register / NBC News; Getty Images

NBC News
After weathering a yearslong political and legal assault, researchers who study disinformation say they see reasons to be cautiously hopeful as their efforts heat up ahead of the 2024 election. 

These researchers, along with the universities and nonprofits that they work for, have been in the crosshairs of Republicans and their allies, accused of acting as government proxies in a Biden administration plot to censor conservative speech online. Since 2021, those who worked to identify and combat disinformation around the last presidential election and Covid-19 have faced lawsuits, congressional inquiries and attacks online and in right-wing media that have threatened their reputations, careers and personal safety.

But recently, those researchers have achieved quiet but significant victories that could signal a shift in the larger war against disinformation.

On Monday, during oral arguments at the Supreme Court, most of the justices voiced some support for governments and researchers working with social media platforms on content moderation, especially related to national security, emergencies and health. After a year of sensational public hearings, a Republican-led congressional committee tasked with discrediting researchers and proving their collusion with the government and tech companies has produced little. And programs under which federal law enforcement shared information with platforms, which had been paused in response to the Republican efforts, have recently resumed. 

Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, who testified and fielded “onerous” records requests last summer as part of Republican House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan’s investigation into the “weaponization” of the federal government, said he was somewhat optimistic about a cooling of the ire directed at those who study online disinformation “into something that’s more reasonable.” MORE