The Trump administration has restructured federal research priorities, and the latest casualty is the research on misinformation.
After President Donald Trump’s executive order ” ending Federal Censorship“, the National Science Foundation cancelled hundreds of grants supporting research on misinformation.
When people share false narratives, they are misinforming themselves. Disinformation is intentionally generated and shared false content when the sharer is aware of the narrative’s suspect nature.
The overwhelming number of Americans, 95%, believe that misinformation and its misleading narratives is a problem.
Americans believe that the government, social media companies and consumers need to take action. The opposite of what Americans desire is to defund research on misinformation or disinformation. Research is essential to countering misleading narratives.
The attack on misleading narratives
Trump’s executive orders claims that Biden’s administration used research on misleading stories to limit the free speech of social media companies.
This claim was rejected by the Supreme Court in a case from 2024.
Trump and GOP politicians still demand that disinformation researchers defend their work, even in the ” Censorship Industrial Complex” hearings from March 2025, which examined alleged government censorship during the Biden administration.
In addition, the U.S. State Department is soliciting all communications that take place between government offices, disinformation researchers, and other government agencies to look for evidence of censorship.
The hearings, the State Department’s decision and Trump’s executive orders to “restore freedom of speech” all suggest that those who conduct misleading narrative research are the enemies of First Amendment guarantees of free speech.
The actions of these individuals have caused significant problems for disinformation researchers – death threat, harassment, and women.
Let’s examine what research on misinformation, disinformation and misinformation is and isn’t.
Content that is misleading
Researchers who study misinformation and disinformation examine the sources for misleading content. Researchers also examine the dissemination of this content. They also look for ways to minimize its negative impacts.
As , a social psychology, who studies misinformation and disinformation, I study the nature of misleading information. I research and share information on the manipulation techniques used by those who spread misinformation in order to influence others. I want to inform people about deception and how to avoid it.
Free speech is not restricted by sharing this information.
Some believe that this research can lead to censorship, when platforms decide to remove or label suspect content, or to ban the primary spreaders. This is what U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan said when he launched investigations into disinformation research in 2023.
The definition of censorship states that only government officials can be censors.
Private companies are entitled to decide what content is displayed on their platforms.
Trump’s own platform, Truth Social, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-to-know-about-truth-social-trumps-social-media-platform#:%7E:text=Truth%20Social%20says%20it%20encourages,impersonating%20others%2C%E2%80%9D%20Muenster%20said. The platform bans "sexual content" and "explicit language", but it also prohibits anything that moderators feel is an attempt to trick, defraud or mislead them and other users.
Elon Musk and Trump, self proclaimed advocates of free speech have also been accused of suppressing content that was critical of them on their platforms.
Musk said that the suppression of accounts was a consequence of the site’s algorithms reducing the “reach of a user if he is frequently blocked or muted” by other users. Truth social representatives claimed accounts were banned because of “bot mitigation procedures,” and authentic accounts could be reinstated if classified as invalid.
What is censorship?
Republicans claim that social media companies are biased towards their content and censor it, or ban conservatives unfairly.
Hearings on ” Censorship Industrial Complex ” held by the House Foreign Affairs South and Central Asia Subcommittee based their findings on the assumption that the “censorship industry complex” was not only a result of misleading narrative research, but also focused on conservative voices.
This assertion is not supported by any evidence.
According to a 2020 study, conservative voices on social media are amplified .
If research shows that conservative content is more likely than liberal to be misinformed and therefore has its posts removed or labelled or their accounts suspended, then it’s because the posts of conservative authors are less likely than liberal posts to contain this misinformation .
A recent survey of X users found this. Researchers studied which posts were tagged more as false or misleading in “community note” – X’s alternative, and Meta’s proposed alternative fact-checking. They found that conservative posts had more false content.
A study from April 2025 shows that conservatives tend to be more vulnerable to misleading content, and are more likely to become targets of it.
Misleading America
The nature and intention of the researchers and the research are misrepresented by those who accuse them of censorship. They are also using disinformation techniques to achieve this.
Here’s how.
Many Republicans believe that the misleading information about bias and censorship has been repeated by politicians and media so many times, as evidenced in Trump’s Executive Order,. The illusory Truth Effect is what psychologists refer to when they say that a person’s mind can be convinced by just three repetitions.
Researchers have identified another tactic called ” accusation with a mirror“. This is when one falsely accuses their perceived opponents of committing, plotting to commit or desiring the same transgressions as one intends to commit or already commits.
The censorship allegations of an administration which removes books in libraries, erases history from monuments, websites and deletes data archives are “accusations made behind a mirror.”
People who spread misinformation will often use individual stories, which are sometimes totally fabricated, to point out that they are not representative of the greater reality.
Facts about fact-checking
The same anecdotal attacks can be used to discredit fact-checkers whose conclusions identify and discredit misinformation, leading to it being tagged or removed from social media. It is achieved by highlighting a situation where fact-checkers have “made a mistake.”
These attacks on fact checking come despite that many of the most controversial decisions have been made by platforms and not fact checkers.
Fact-checking is a good way to reduce the spread of misleading content.
In studies comparing the perceived effectiveness between professional fact-checkers and algorithms, as well as everyday users, is rated to be the most effective.
Republicans report mistrust of fact-checkers because they believe the fact-checkers to be biased. Research shows that there is little bias in the selection of those who are fact-checked. It’s just that prominent speakers tend to get checked more.
Even conservatives will often agree that the correct decision was made when shown the results of fact-checking specific posts.
Searching for solutions
Account Bans and threats of suspensions are more effective at stopping misinformation than fact-checks, but also more controversy. These labels are considered to be more similar to censorship .
could be used to identify solutions on which liberals and conservatives can agree.
On social media platforms like Bluesky, you can give people the option to toggle misinformation moderation on or off.
Trump’s executive orders seeks to ban this research. The order is likely to weaken Americans’ defences , rather than provide protection.
H. Colleen Sinclair is funded by a number of foundations and government sources. The author is solely responsible for the statements and opinions in this article. The Social Research and Evaluation Center does not endorse any of the statements and opinions contained in this article.
