Data scientists at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering announced that they have launched a tool to analyze political advertisements on Facebook in Canada.
The tool, which is an interactive website, is launching ahead of the federal election on October 21st.
The website allows users to view the amount of money each party has spent on political advertising. It also lets them view the target demographic and region.
“We hope our website will help the media better understand political ad spend and targeting, and we plan to continue to build this platform with data from additional countries and platforms,” said Damon McCoy, an assistant professor at NYU, in an emailed press release.
The data scientists say they created the tool by using machine learning and data scraping tools. The project is a part of the team’s political advertising analysis from 2018.
The 2018 analysis, which was called the Online Transparency Project, has reviewed more than one million advertisements. It examined how many political organizations spent to target U.S. voters.
Facebook Canada has rolled out its own ad transparency tools ahead of the election earlier this year, as previously reported by MobileSyrup.
Those who post an ad in regards to the election need to confirm their identity and location in Canada. They are also required to disclose who is responsible for the ad.
Additionally, Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould told MobileSyrup in May that she was confident that the updated C-76 rules will protect the country from any election meddling.
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