Resumo
- Not long after publicizing the work, she and her colleagues became the target of what she calls a “multi-pronged” strategy to discredit it. She has since been a defendant in several high-profile lawsuits, appeared for interviews at congressional hearings and has defended accusations that she colluded with the government to censor free speech in the United States.
- Close to half of the world’s population lives in countries holding elections in 2024. Two of the biggest contests are in India, where results were declared earlier this month, and in the United States, which is due to vote in November.
- In the United States, one lightning-rod electoral issue is redistricting, the once-in-a-decade process in which electoral maps are redrawn after the national census to ensure that each district has a similar number of people. (…) One of the system’s oddities, says Wang, is that elected officials control how electoral maps are drawn, often giving one party the power to build bias into the maps through a process known as gerrymanderin.
- Princeton University investigated the data manipulation and bullying claims, and concluded, in August 2022, that the allegations were without merit. A further investigation by the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation (SCI), which took another year to complete, also concluded that Wang had not manipulated data.
- In January, a series of articles across multiple media outlets called out Enyedi and attacked the EU for using public money to support research which, the articles said, was “biased against illiberal democracies and in favour of the agenda of George Soros”.
- But here, political scientists say that the problem is not that they feel pressure from the state or pro-government organizations while researching the political and electoral landscapes. “Our greatest problem is that we are ignored by both the media and the larger community,” says Ali Çarkoğlu at Koç University in Istanbul, who studies voting behaviour.
- In January, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi, a not-for-profit think tank at which Verniers also holds an appointment, lost its licence to obtain funding from abroad. The decision — widely viewed as political — has blocked funding to the CPR, endangering its future.
- Initially, Starbird followed advice to not respond to online attacks or articles containing falsehoods. But she says that approach didn’t work. “This idea that you can just let it fester, because it hasn’t hit one of these mainstream media outlets yet — it’s just not how things work any more,” she says.
Minha Opinião
Os ataques e pressões políticas que acadêmicos de diferentes países vêm sofrendo demonstram como a mudança no discurso público está se tornando cada vez mais clara. Se a academia costumava ter o mesmo direito de trabalhar da maneira que era melhor para a execução de suas atividades, agora é notável a maior influência que a política e as redes sociais têm no trabalho dos pesquisadores. Além disso, é claro como as questões econômicas são usadas para estrangular, pouco a pouco, o desenvolvimento de pesquisas com impactos políticos e vozes dissidentes.