Arabella Advisors, a consultant firm with ties to the Democratic Party, manages funds that are supporting academic and independent research into online “misinformation,” predominantly targeting conservatives’ online presence.
Researchers funded by the Arabella network recommended strategies such as censorship as ways to mitigate the spread of “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
“Groups like the Arabella network weaponize charitable laws and tax exemption to aid Democratic electoral victories, bypassing the IRS prohibition on electioneering,” Hayden Ludwig, senior investigative researcher at Capital Research Center (CRC), a conservative watchdog group researching liberal financial influence, told the DCNF.
Several funds managed by Arabella Advisors, a Democrat-linked consultant firm, are quietly bankrolling research by universities and non-profits into how online “misinformation” and “disinformation” spreads, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of the networks’ grants.
Arabella Advisors, run by former Bill Clinton official Eric Kessler, manages certain administrative, legal and philanthropic functions of several non-profits including the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, North Fund and New Venture Fund, which donate to a variety of left-leaning groups, causes and Democratic candidates, according to tax filings and statements on the funds’ and Arabella’s websites. Several funds within the network are also sponsoring research into the effects of, and how best to mitigate, misinformation and disinformation, according to a DCNF review of public grants.
Many of the Arabella-funded research projects cite conservatives predominantly as purveyors of misinformation, with several projects recommending solutions to mitigate the spread of misinformation, including censorship.
The New Venture Fund sponsored a project in March called “The True Costs of Misinformation” at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, led by the center’s research director Joan Donovan, that sought to study the impacts of online misinformation, particularly on “vulnerable communities,” according to the project’s description. The project included a workshop featuring several panels on different topics related to the alleged impacts of misinformation.
A presentation titled “What Is Driving Conservativism’s Post-Democratic Turn in America?” by Steven Feldstein at the Carnegie Council ostensibly examined the impact of misinformation on the perceived “anti-democratic” attitudes espoused by conservatives in the U.S., according to the workshop agenda.
“How did American conservatives reach a point where their main political messages are either blatantly anti-democratic or outright falsehoods?” the presentation’s description read, alleging that “political partisanship” in the U.S. was “largely stoked by conservative propaganda and disinformation.”
One panel entirely focused on strategies for “misinformation mitigation,” with presentations from researchers at the University of Washington and Google, among other places, according to the workshop agenda. The strategies included legislative action to alter election laws to curb election misinformation, and “psychological inoculation” against dis- and misinformation.
Another presentation sought to figure out ways to demonetize sites promoting “divisive disinformation on COVID” at “the industry or policy level,” according to the workshop agenda.
The Shorenstein Center did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
https://dailycaller.com/2022/12/26/arabella-network-dark-money-misinformation-research/