About

Making the invisible visible — PoliDashboard is an open-source app for tracking political advertisements on Meta-owned advertising platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. It is designed to help voters, journalists, campaign staffers, and others track the use of targeted ads related to social issues, elections, or politics.

The dashboard is developed by the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University as part of an international election transparency initiative. The app’s data comes from the Meta Ad Library API and is automatically processed and updated daily. Country-specific dashboards are presented in partnership with select academic and civic partners in countries where the Meta Ad Library is available. 

PoliDashboard is unique among Meta-focused political ad dashboards. Unlike similar ad tracking tools, PoliDashboard focuses on the activities of each advertiser rather than individual ads. It is the only app that offers users a near-real-time overview of when and how an advertiser, like a political party or lobbying group, spends its ad budget on Meta-owned platforms and the demographic groups it targets.

The app’s primary purpose is to help enhance the transparency of paid political ads on Meta’s platforms, making them more resistant to manipulation by foreign and domestic actors. Additionally, it can serve as a tool to detect financial and other types of fraud on Meta’s advertising platforms.

More countries will be added in the future as additional resources become available. If you are interested in collaborating with us on a dashboard for your country, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Partner Institutions

• The Australian PoliDashboard is presented in partnership with the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology.

• More TBA…

 Team Members

• Original Concept and Design:  Philip Mai and Anatoliy Gruzd

• Developers: Tiago Ribeiro (2023), Jingwei Zhang (2023), Nikolai Krause (2018-2022)

Contact Us

We welcome comments and suggestions for improving the dashboard. If you have any questions, please get in touch with us via info[at]socialmedialab.ca or visit the project’s GitHub page.

About the Social Media Lab

Located in the heart of downtown Toronto, the Social Media Lab is a multi- and interdisciplinary research laboratory at Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University. The Lab studies how social media is changing how people and organizations communicate, share information, conduct business, and form communities, and how these changes impact society. The broad aim of the Lab’s research initiatives is to advance the public’s understanding of the benefits and pitfalls of social media adoption with a focus on combating and managing the spread of misinformation and disinformation. 

The Social Media Lab was established in 2010 and is the first of its kind in North America. It is led by co-directors, Anatoliy Gruzd (PhD) and Philip Mai (JD). The Lab is internationally recognized and attracts a diverse range of outstanding multidisciplinary scholars from around the world each year. It is a leader in social media studies and is the convener of the International Conference on Social Media and Society (#SMSociety). 

In addition to conducting original empirical research and producing public reports around matters of public interest, the Social Media Lab also develops research apps, tools, and information dashboards to support social science research on online participation. Some of the Lab’s research tools and apps such as Communalytic and PoliDashboard are used by thousands of students, educators, researchers, and journalists worldwide each year. In recent years, the Lab has also developed the expertise to build and rapidly deploy information dashboards that can track online misinformation around fast-moving topics such as the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Russian-Ukraine War.