Making Sense of a Networked World since 2010

The Social Media Lab is an interdisciplinary research center at the Ted Rogers School of Management, part of Toronto Metropolitan University. The lab examines how social media and digital technologies are transforming the way people and organizations communicate, share information, conduct business, and foster communities.

It also examines the broader impact of these shifts on society. Through its research, the lab aims to help the public better understand both the benefits and potential downsides of adopting new technologies with a focus on combating and managing the spread of misinformation and disinformation.

Recent Posts

Communalytic Introduces Civility Analyzer Module

A New Research Module for Identifying Both Toxic and Prosocial Interactions in Online Discourse Toronto, Ontario – –...

[New Report] The State of Social Media in Canada 2025.

Social media use among Canadians has largely rebounded. X (formerly Twitter) stands out as the lone decliner. TORONTO — May 2025 —...

Two-thirds of Canadians have experimented with generative AI, but most don’t understand its impacts

When ChatGPT entered the public imagination in 2022, Canadians were curious, hopeful, anxious and had plenty of questions. Just three years later,...

The Hidden Game: How Scammers Use “Chameleon Ads” to Bypass Meta’s Moderation

Over the last few weeks, a series of stories by The Guardian, CBC, and The Logic has highlighted an explosion of fraudulent Facebook and Instagram ads...

[New Report] The State of Social Media in Canada 2025.

Social media use among Canadians has largely rebounded. X (formerly Twitter) stands out as the lone decliner. TORONTO — May 2025 —...

Two-thirds of Canadians have experimented with generative AI, but most don’t...

When ChatGPT entered the public imagination in 2022, Canadians were curious, hopeful, anxious and had plenty of questions. Just three years later,...

[New Report] The State of Generative AI Use in Canada 2025: Exploring Public Attitudes...

TORONTO — April 2025 — A majority of Canadians (66%) have experimented with Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools less than three years after ChatGPT’s public...
Social Media Research Toolkit
A list of 50+ social media research tools curated by researchers at the Social Media Lab. Only tools that have been used in peer-reviewed academic studies are included.
Communalytic is a research platform for studying online communities and online discourse. It can collect and analyze public data from various social media platforms including Reddit, Twitter, and CrowdTangle (Facebook/Instagram). It uses advanced AI, text, social network analysis techniques to automatically analyze posts’ content, pinpoint toxicity, detect bots, assesses sentiments, and discover comms networks.
Netlytic
Netlytic is a text and social networks analyzer that can automatically summarizes public conversations and discover communication networks from social media posts. It uses various APIs to collect public posts from Twitter, YouTube and RSS feed. It can also support the analysis of your own datasets via .text/.csv. files.
Visit the Russia-Ukraine Misinfo DashboardConflictMisinfo.org