The Formation and Dissolution of the Disinformation Governance Board
On April 27th, the Department of Homeland Security announced the formation of the Disinformation Governance Board with the goal combatting disinformation and misinformation that is a threat to national security. “We address disinformation that presents a security threat to the homeland, disinformation from Russia, from China, from Iran, from the cartels,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in an interview. President Joe Biden appointed political researcher and writer Nina Jankowicz as executive director of the newly formed DBG.
How the board will accomplish its mission has been met with skepticism and criticism. According to Secretary Mayorkas, other DHS agencies will identify and respond to disinformation and misinformation, while the board will create the “guidelines, standards, and guardrails” that these agencies will follow in order to not violate constitutional rights or the first amendment. Republicans and social media users have quickly dubbed this board as Biden’s “Ministry of Truth,” a reference to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
These DHS agencies include Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) tasked with countering election disinformation from foreign governments, false US migration policy spread by cartels, and incorrect information spread during natural disasters.
The board’s elected leader, Nina Jankowicsz has been criticized by those on the political right as being partisan and left leaning. Jankowicz has condemned Elon Musk’s takeover bid of Twitter and the effect “free-speech absolutists” will have on marginalized communities. She dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “Trump campaign product.” The viral TikTok above shows Nina singing a song about misinformation to the tune of Mary Poppin’s musical classic “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
Experts in disinformation have called into question the unclear and undefined authority that the board would have in censuring information. Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, remarked, "The board can’t have real enforcement authority because it would be unconstitutional. The government can’t say to any online entity, that’s not truthful you have to take it down, (because) that would violate the First Amendment." Clemson University Disinformation Professor Darren Linville described the board as a “little ministry of truth-y.” Other experts have remarked that some of these criticisms are overexaggerated.
Only three weeks after the announcement, the board’s activity has been “paused” and the DBG has been disbanded. On Wednesday, Nina Jankowicz resigned from the board amid an onslaught of personal and physical attacks including death threats.