In September, Meta launched the Foundational Integrity Research request for proposals (RFP). Today, we’re announcing the winners of this award.

Meta’s integrity efforts are at the heart of the company’s mission to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Our Foundational Integrity Research awards have been a vehicle for connecting Meta to academic work that can move us closer to fulfilling that mission. Through this initiative, we’ve fostered deep collaborations with academic institutions and investigators who conduct foundational and applied research in domains such as misinformation, hate speech, violence and incitement, and coordinated harm.

“We are excited to grant these awards to cultivate new knowledge on integrity and establish deeper connections with global social science researchers,” says Umer Farooq, Director of Research for Integrity at Meta.

The RFP attracted 503 proposals from 349 universities and institutions around the world. Moving forward, we hope to leverage connections we’ve built through this RFP to continue to engage deeply with academic partners on integrity-related topics. We will not be offering the RFP this year but want to thank everyone who took the time to submit a proposal in 2022. Congratulations to the winners.

Research award recipients

Principal investigators are listed first unless otherwise noted.

Analyzing perceptions of hateful speech using conjoint experiments
Thomas Ralph Davidson (Rutgers University–New Brunswick)

Combating Facebook misinformation with local knowledge and community
Susan Fussell, Sharifa Sultana (Cornell University)

Countering misinformation in the Southern Hemisphere: A comparative study
Michelle Riedlinger, Silvia Montaña-Niño (Queensland University of Technology), Marina Joubert (Stellenbosch University), Víctor García-Perdomo (Universidad de La Sabana)

Digital literacy, demographics, and disinformation
Julia Bernd (International Computer Science Institute)

Emotionally-driven, memetic anti-propaganda campaigns
Marina Kogan (University of Utah)

Gamifying media literacy interventions for low digital literacy populations
Ayesha Ali, Agha Ali Raza, Ihsan Ayyub Qazi (Lahore University of Management Sciences)

Identifying macro and micro factors in spreading conspiratorial content
Yu-Ru Lin, Amin Rahimian (University of Pittsburgh)

Improving user discernment against inauthentic social media accounts
Mohsen Mosleh (University of Exeter), Cameron Martel, David G. Rand (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Investigating persuasiveness of contextualized disinformation across media
Aske Mottelson (IT University of Copenhagen)

Testing empathy and cognition to reduce later harms from misinformation
Jean Decety, Michael Cohen (University of Chicago)

Testing interventions to counter the spread of misinformation
Chico Camargo (University of Exeter)