Trump Administration Cancels Scores of Grants to Study Online Misinformation

The Trump administration has sharply expanded its campaign against experts who track misinformation and other harmful content online, abruptly canceling scores of scientific research grants at universities across the country.

The grants funded research into topics like ways to evade censors in China. One grant at the Rochester Institute of Technology, for example, sought to design a tool to detect fabricated videos or photos generated by artificial intelligence. Another, at Kent State University in Ohio, studied how malign actors posing as ordinary users manipulate information on social media.