Proposal Directs $1 Million in Funding to Investigate COVID-19 Misinformation, Disinformation

Democrats in both the House and the Senate recently proposed legislation that would grant $1 million to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a probe into how online disinformation and misinformation disrupted the public response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disinformation refers to details that are inherently manipulated or disseminated with an intentional aim to be deceptive. Misinformation does not necessarily involve the intent to mislead.

Introduced by Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), this probe would be mandated by the COVID-19 Disinformation Research and Reporting Act and would attempt to uncover the foreign and domestic sources behind COVID-related inaccurate information.

In a press release from September 24, 2020, Rep. Wexton said, "Misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19 is rampant and undermines the tireless work being done by our public health officials, doctors, and scientists to keep our communities safe and healthy. False information, spread willfully or not, can be deadly in a public health crisis like this. With this legislation, Senator Hirono and I are tasking the brightest scientific minds to examine this threat and provide lawmakers with the objective analysis we need to confront it."

 In June, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing highlighting that, since the onset of the pandemic, there has been an influx in fake news media regarding the pandemic on many social media and news sites. Conspiracy theories, myths, and hoaxes about the pandemic have led to health officials scrambling to set the record straight and disseminate accurate information, which is often drowned out by fallacies. Doctors fear that patients are trusting what they read online rather than fact-based medical insights.

Sen. Hirono said of the new legislation, “200,000 Americans have died as the coronavirus pandemic rages on. As we work to curb infections across the country, we also face an infodemic caused by the viral spread of false information on the internet—particularly on social media. The COVID-19 Disinformation Research and Reporting Act will help our country get to the bottom of where coronavirus disinformation came from, how it spread, and how to mitigate the impact of COVID-related misinformation and disinformation going forward.”

The legislation calls for a study that would analyze how social media platforms contribute to the spread of baseless claims, and it would create a plan for how to counter this problem in the future.