Re:DIS – Rethinking Disinformation is a German Research Foundation (DFG) priority program worth €6.9 million over its first three-year tranche (2025-28). Coordinated by philosophers Romy Jaster, Geert Keil and Verena Wagner at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the scheme invites project bids from German universities to create a common research platform for disinformation research across the fields of philosophy, psychology, communication studies, media law, linguistics and computer science. The call stresses boundary cases – subtle manipulations that are thought to slip beneath ordinary fact-checking – by integrating normative and empirical approaches.
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Rethinking Disinformation (Re:DIS)
Humboldt University of Berlin
German Research Foundation [Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)]...See all
German Research Foundation [Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)] See less
Commentary:
Re:DIS shifts the disinformation debate from dashboard metrics to first principles. By foregrounding epistemology, the program avoids the reflex to call for faster bans or bigger filters. Yet its tight orbit around Humboldt’s philosophy faculty may narrow the field to analytic puzzles. A DFG Schwerpunktprogramm is designed for disciplinary dialogue, but the framing has consequences: theory first can become theory only. If funded teams confine themselves to typologies of lying and loopholes in Grundgesetz caselaw, the result will be elegant papers and little insight into a public sphere tilted by commercial platforms and geopolitics. Still, the effort to fuse scattered literatures could lay a firmer base for later scrutiny – provided scholars follow their premises into the marketplace and the ministries.
Re:DIS shifts the disinformation debate from dashboard metrics to first principles. By foregrounding epistemology, the program avoids the reflex to call for faster bans or bigger filters. Yet its tight orbit around Humboldt’s philosophy faculty may narrow the field to analytic puzzles. A DFG Schwerpunktprogramm is designed for disciplinary dialogue, but the framing has consequences: theory first can become theory only. If funded teams confine themselves to typologies of lying and loopholes in Grundgesetz caselaw, the result will be elegant papers and little insight into a public sphere tilted by commercial platforms and geopolitics. Still, the effort to fuse scattered literatures could lay a firmer base for later scrutiny – provided scholars follow their premises into the marketplace and the ministries.
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