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| Facebook is funding independent research that aims to study and help guard against manipulation of social media in elections (AFP Photo/Lionel BONAVENTURE) |
Washington (AFP) - Facebook announced Monday it would make its data available to academics studying the impact of social media on elections, part of an effort to prevent manipulation of social platforms.
The leading
social network said some 60 researchers from 30 academic institutions across 11
countries were selected under a review process by the Social Science Research
Council and the independent group Social Science One.
Facebook
began the research initiative last year after revelations of foreign influence
campaigns on the 2016 US election and the Brexit vote in Britain.
It began
soliciting proposals last year, and on Monday unveiled its first research
grants.
"To
assure the independence of the research and the researchers, Facebook did not
play any role in the selection of the individuals or their projects and will
have no role in directing the findings or conclusions of the research,"
said a blog post by Facebook executives Elliot Schrage and Chaya Nayak.
"We
hope this initiative will deepen public understanding of the role social media
has on elections and democracy and help Facebook and other companies improve
their products and practices."
The
researchers will be granted access to Facebook's internal data through a "first-of-its-kind
data sharing infrastructure to provide researchers access to Facebook data in a
secure manner that protects people's privacy," Schrage and Nayak wrote.
"Some
of these steps include building a process to remove personally identifiable information
from the data set and only allowing researcher access to the data set through a
secure portal."
Gary King
and Nathaniel Persily of Social Science One said in a statement the researchers
will seek to move swiftly to help social networks improve their security and
integrity.
"The
urgency of this research cannot be overstated," they wrote.
"Elections
in India are already underway, the European Parliamentary elections will take
place in short order, and the US presidential primary campaigns have begun in
earnest. Concerns about disinformation, polarization, political advertising,
and the role of platforms in the information ecosystem have not diminished. If
anything, they have heightened."
Some of the
research groups cited are based at Northeastern University, Ohio State
University and New York University and Virginia Tech University in the United
States; France's Institute of Political Studies; National Chengchi University
in Taiwan; Italy's Universita di Urbino Carlo Bo; University of Sao Paulo in
Brazil; Germany's Technical University of Munich; the University of Amsterdam
in the Netherlands; and Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.
Funding for
the research will come from several organizations including the Democracy Fund,
the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation and the
Omidyar Network.
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