Collaborative Research: HNDS-I: The Digital Society Project: Infrastructure for Measuring Internet Politics

Issues such as internet freedom, cybersecurity, misinformation, and the polarization caused by social media are central to modern life. They play a key role in social life, politics, and the strength of democracy around the world. Yet measuring how these issues affect political events in online spaces is hard.

Scholars do not know what factors matter most. This project will produce tools and data to help study problems in the online world that affect state security, business risk, and daily life.

This grant supports infrastructure to collect data from around the world on cybersecurity, internet freedom, disinformation, coordinated information operations, and the politicization and polarization of social media. The project builds a global pool of experts who will provide data each year. It also advances methods to ensure that these data are valid.

The project links the data to a massive set of political tweets, coded by place. Scholars and others can access these data through an online interface and open-source software. This project can help us learn how states monitor, alter, and control online space.

This research is critically important to the US government, aid and human rights groups, and private industry. Policy makers can also rely on this project to better understand how, and where, to step in to curb internet-driven political violence, stop the spread of disinformation, reduce electoral manipulation, and enhance government accountability.

Civil society groups can use assessments of online freedom and cybersecurity to improve human rights surveillance. Firms can use the data to reduce harm caused by their social media platforms. Finally, teachers and students can use this project to better understand politics in a digital world, equipping citizens to safely traverse the modern information landscape.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.