Grants to improve Public Spaces in Pennsylvania

The Global Engagement Center (GEC) seeks to fund research dedicated to understanding and quantifying the scope and scale of foreign propaganda and disinformation across games and game-adjacent platforms, specifically targeting Eastern Europe. This grant program is designed to gather evidence-based insights into how these information manipulation campaigns operate within interactive digital environments. The core mission alignment of this specific solicitation is combating foreign influence and ensuring an accurate information landscape, focusing on one of the newer vectors for disinformation spread. The target beneficiaries of this research are governments, industry stakeholders, and civil society organizations who are working to mitigate the effects of foreign influence operations. The immediate impact goal is to produce quantified and qualified data that accurately maps the problem space. The longer-term impact is achieved through the subsequent convening, where the findings are shared and discussed, leading to more informed policies, industry best practices, and effective civil society interventions aimed at countering propaganda. The program's priorities and focuses are clearly defined: the research must address foreign propaganda and disinformation specifically as it occurs within games and gaming platforms, with a geographic emphasis on Eastern Europe. This focus area reflects a strategic priority to address information threats in emerging and understudied digital spaces. While a detailed theory of change for the broader GEC is not provided, the theory underpinning this specific project is that rigorous research leads to shared knowledge, which in turn catalyzes coordinated action and effective countermeasures by key stakeholders. The expected outcomes include the completion and sharing of a comprehensive research report detailing the scope and scale of the problem. Measurable results center on the production of this report and the successful organization and execution of the convening event, which serves as a critical mechanism for disseminating the findings to the eligible applicants (U.S. and foreign non-profits, institutions of higher education, and commercial entities) who might participate in or benefit from the work.