Ryan Calo and Kate Starbird write:

Academics researching online misinformation in the US are learning a hard lesson: Academic freedom cannot be taken for granted. They face a concerted effort—including by members of Congress—to undermine or silence their work documenting false and misleading internet content. The claim is that online misinformation researchers are trying to silence conservative voices. The evidence suggests just the opposite.

It’s sobering to remember that the principle of academic freedom scarcely existed in the United States until the 20th century, when the firing of a Stanford University professor over his populist political views caused a public uproar. The incident led to the formation of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which released its Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure in 1940. The concept was soon tested in the 1950s when Senate committees investigated dozens of academics, including Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, for holding “un-American” views. It took a string of Supreme Court cases upholding academic freedom, and the public censure by his peers of communism scaremonger Senator Joseph McCarthy, to close this fraught chapter in American history.

Today, academic freedom is under assault once more. Some states, like Florida, seek to ban scholarship touching upon structural racism. Elected officials seek to undermine scientific consensus on climate change and public health by impugning experts. As we’ve seen through our own work at the University of Washington, the study of misinformation has become the newest political target of the right. Scholars from diverse academic backgrounds have converged to research how the internet and social media reshape discourse, facilitate the spread of falsehoods, and get manipulated for political and financial gain. These efforts have coalesced into a field of study aimed at better understanding technologies such as social media and artificial intelligence, while documenting the spread of misinformation about elections, global conflict, the environment, and health.

These researchers—from tenured professors to undergraduate students—have been subjected to online harassment, lawsuits, and repeated smears in partisan media. Some have received physical threats to their safety in comments, emails, phone calls, and even letters. Scholars at several universities (including one of us, K.S.) have been questioned, investigated, and summoned before committees of Congress, ostensibly for colluding with the Biden administration to censor conservatives. No credible evidence of the alleged collusion has surfaced. The real problem some politicians have with the research is that it can blunt ideological campaigns to mislead the public. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports:

Claire Wardle knew her email account wasn’t private. Starting last fall, whenever the prominent misinformation researcher sent or received an email, she had to consider how the message might be swept up and publicly picked apart.

That’s because Wardle’s employer at the time, Brown University, had engaged a law firm to use AI software to sift through her correspondence, searching for messages from government agencies or tech companies at the request of a Republican-led investigation into the politically divisive field of misinformation research.

The investigation stems from a legal campaign led by allies of former president Donald Trump to cast the study of misinformation as part of a broader conspiracy to censor conservative voices online. It has transformed the daily life and work of Wardle and many others who worked at tracking election misinformation online, a field now reeling as the 2024 presidential race enters its final months. [Continue reading…]