Germany’s main research-funding agency, the DFG, manages an annual budget of about €3.9 billion, drawn 70 percent from the federal government and the remainder from the Länder. In March 2025 it approved eight new Priority Programs, among them “Rethinking Disinformation (Re:DIS),” led by Dr. Romy Jaster (HU Berlin). The three-year project will receive €6.9 million. Previously, between 2018 and 2025, the DFG supported the project “Empowering Citizens and Protecting Democracy in the Digital Age” at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, which develops “cognitive and behavioral interventions to combat online misinformation and manipulation.” Across all schemes, the DFG supported 31,700 projects in 2023; competitive peer review remains the sole award criterion, although federal and state officials sit on every grants committee.
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German Research Foundation [Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)]
3900000
Rethinking Disinformation (Re:DIS), Max Planck Institute for Human Development [für...See all
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Commentary:
The DFG’s scale rivals a mid-size ministry, yet its program accounting stops at headline totals: budgets for individual Priority Programmes, clusters or Sonderforschungsbereiche become public only years later, and sub-grants to institutes such as Amerikahaus or IfKW never appear in the annual ledger. Political neutrality is formally guaranteed, but the federal-state voting bloc inside the Senate shapes topic calls. Hence it evinces strategic orientation toward disinformation and cybersecurity matters. Re:DIS will finance theoretical and psychological work, aligning itself with interior ministry talking points regarding online manipulation.
The DFG’s scale rivals a mid-size ministry, yet its program accounting stops at headline totals: budgets for individual Priority Programmes, clusters or Sonderforschungsbereiche become public only years later, and sub-grants to institutes such as Amerikahaus or IfKW never appear in the annual ledger. Political neutrality is formally guaranteed, but the federal-state voting bloc inside the Senate shapes topic calls. Hence it evinces strategic orientation toward disinformation and cybersecurity matters. Re:DIS will finance theoretical and psychological work, aligning itself with interior ministry talking points regarding online manipulation.
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