This article talks about a research project studying the virality of propaganda in social media. The article paints a political picture, the only paper cited by the article (one of at least 30 published by the project) discovered that a viral social media attack/campaign against a democratic senator was the result of about 10 twitter bots. The article then cites the republican congressman who launched the investigation into this study.

No mention of the FBI, and the NSF provided funding but the project has made statements to the effect that the NSF is not involved, as listed in the article.

This title is very misleading...

from the article: ' “Truth about Truthy.” In a series of bullet points, the department said the project is not a "political watchdog, a government probe of social media, an attempt to suppress free speech, a way to define 'misinformation,' a partisan political effort, [or] a database tracking hate speech."

"There is a good dose of irony in a research project that studies the diffusion of misinformation becoming the target of such a powerful disinformation machine," the research department wrote. '