Social Science Research Council, an international nonprofit, announced the creation of a three-year, $10 million research project aimed at quantifying the costs and harms of disinformation and misinformation and how to reduce their impact, according to a Nov. 17 press release from the Rockefeller Foundation.
The initiative, dubbed The Mercury Project, will fund projects based in the U.S., Africa, Asia and Latin America for up to three years. It is the first project connecting organizations fighting public health misinformation on five continents.
Other donors for the project are the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Craig Newmark Philanthropies.
"Currently we lack knowledge about cost-effective interventions that may be able to counter the effects of mis- and dis-information, and support the uptake of reliable and accurate information," Anna Harvey, president of the Social Science Research Council, said in the release. "But evidence, data, and collaboration are cornerstones to solving many of society’s global issues, and the researchers in The Mercury Project consortium will lay the groundwork to improve public health now and for decades to come."
The Mercury Project is accepting initial letters of inquiry on a rolling basis now through May 1.