A new initiative dubbed The Citizen Browser Project aims to use a custom-designed browser to illuminate how disinformation spreads on social media.

The initiative, the Nieman Journalism Lab reported today, is being launched by The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates how technology influences society. The Markup is teaming up with The New York Times to report on the findings it gathers.

As part of the project, 1,200 participants will be paid to install a custom browser on their desktops that will allow them to share what content is recommended to them on major social media platforms. The browser, which has been developed by The Markup, is set to initially focus on gathering data from Facebook and YouTube. Any personally identifiable information that it collects will be removed by The Markup before it’s analyzed.

The goal of the initiative is to shed light on the algorithms that social media giants use to recommend news items and other content to users. In particular, the objective will be to identify “what information they serve their users, what news and narratives are amplified or suppressed, and which online communities those users are encouraged to join.”

To provide an accurate picture of how online platforms promote content to different groups, the 1,200 participants in the initiative will be nationally representative. “Data collected from this panel will form statistically valid samples of the American population across age, race, gender, geography, and political affiliation,” the homepage for The Citizen Browser Project reads.

Beyond giving the public a better view of the mechanisms behind online content recommendation, the initiative will also seek to provide insights into how social media giants target ads to users. According to Fast Company, The Markup plans to publish findings from the study via a series of articles slated to appear in the New York Times next year.

The study itself is expected to begin in the coming weeks. It could kick off as early as before the election and is expected to continue until at least after the presidential inauguration in January.

The Citizen Browser Project is launching in a time when social media giants are facing scrutiny over not only their handling of disinformation on their platforms but also business practices. The House antitrust subcommittee suggested in a landmark October report that tech giants have amassed so much market power that they may have to be broken up. 

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