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 other digital technologies, such as AI, are transforming the way people and organizations communicate, disseminate information, conduct business and form communities, and how these changes impact society.

The broad aim of the lab’s various research initiatives and digital tools is to advance the public’s understanding of the benefits and pitfalls of adopting new technologies with a focus on addressing the erosion of information integrity online.

Recent Posts

[New Paper Alert] Same Platform, Different Stories: TikTok and the Battle Over Immigration Narratives

“What happens when the digital town square becomes a digital battleground?”

Call for International Doctoral Students: Short-Term Research Visit at the Social Media Lab

The Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University welcomes expressions of interest from international PhD students interested in applying...

Research Talk: How does the social media based attention economy contribute to dehumanization and...

Guest Speaker: Dr. Jaigris Hodson, Professor and Canada Research Chair, Royal Roads University

PoliDashboard Unveils 25 New Country-Specific Dashboards, Advancing Global Transparency in Political Advertising on Meta...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEFebruary 4, 2026 Toronto, Ontario — In the wake of recent reports...

Russia Sanctions Social Media Lab Researchers for Tracking War Misinformation

The Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan...

Fractured Facts: How Generative AI Fuels Anti-Immigrant Misinformation

Most conversations about AI focus on convenience, like how it drafts emails or speeds up everyday tasks, but the...

[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,...
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 no-code computational social science research tool for studying online communities and public discourse on social media.

An App For Tracking Targeted Political Ads, elections and social issues ads on Facebook and Instagram
The Deepfakes Tracker research portal is a public-facing research hub that tracks and contextualizes the evolving use of deepfakes and synthetic media online.
Visit our new 'Deepfakes Tracker' portal to learn more about deepfakes and manipulated mediaDeepFakesTracker.org