Top Democracy Award Honors Research Project on Fake News

Oxford Internet Institute’s Computational Propaganda Project Wins Prestigious Democracy Award

The Oxford Internet Institute’s Project on Computational Propaganda has received the National Democratic Institute’s W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award, recognizing its pioneering research on social media manipulation and political disinformation.

The award was presented at a ceremony in Washington DC, where the NDI, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting democratic institutions worldwide, honored three recipients for their work combating disinformation. The Oxford project shares this year’s recognition with StopFake.org and Rappler, placing them in the company of previous distinguished honorees including Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, and Bill Clinton.

“Our team broke the story that bots and junk news were being used to manipulate voters in systematic ways in countries around the world,” said Professor Philip Howard, Principal Investigator at the Project on Computational Propaganda. “We started off studying these things in authoritarian regimes, but when Brexit and the US election happened we were ahead of the curve in being able to identify how social media is used by political parties and governments.”

The Oxford researchers have conducted extensive investigations across nine countries in depth, produced analyses on specific elections, and performed comparative studies spanning 30 nations. Their findings reveal a troubling global pattern of computational propaganda techniques being deployed to influence public opinion and electoral outcomes.

According to researcher Lisa-Maria Neudert, 2016 marked a turning point when online misinformation emerged as a global-scale problem. “Misinformation, fake news and other forms of polarising content are not a fringe problem, but occur in the political mainstream,” she explained. Their research uncovered widespread sharing of misinformation during recent elections in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

The US case appears particularly concerning, with the team’s analysis showing that users shared equal amounts of factual information and misinformation during the 2016 presidential election campaign. This balance between legitimate and false content creates significant challenges for voters attempting to make informed decisions.

The NDI emphasized the critical importance of this research in its award statement, describing disinformation in politics as “a critical threat to the US, to our allies and to democracy itself.” The organization highlighted how social media platforms’ global reach, combined with advancing artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, has created powerful tools that autocratic regimes increasingly exploit to control information environments.

Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, President of the European Research Council, which provides funding for the Project on Computational Propaganda, expressed pride in the recognition: “The European Research Council congratulates Professor Phil Howard for having his work recognized by a prestigious award. The ground-breaking potential of his research on computational propaganda was the reason why the ERC funded his project substantially in 2014.”

The award underscores the growing recognition that digital disinformation represents one of democracy’s most pressing challenges. As social media platforms continue to serve as primary information sources for citizens worldwide, understanding and counteracting manipulation techniques has become essential for preserving electoral integrity.

Professor Howard acknowledged that addressing the problem requires collaboration with technology companies: “Social media also has to be part of the solution, so we’re actively looking for ways to improve political conversations.”

The recognition of Oxford’s Project on Computational Propaganda comes at a pivotal moment when governments, technology companies, and civil society organizations are grappling with how to maintain information integrity in the digital age. Their research provides crucial insights for developing effective responses to computational propaganda while preserving open democratic discourse online.