The Australian Internet Observatory: progress, tools and partnerships
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Date 1 October 2025
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) celebrates a year since the launch of the Australian Internet Observatory (AIO), an initiative of the ADM+S in collaboration with researchers and research centres, university partners and organisations across Australia and internationally.
Since it began, the AIO has worked to build research infrastructure that supports the independent, ethical, and large-scale study of digital platforms. Over the past year it has focused on developing technical tools, collaborative research models, and international partnerships, laying the groundwork for a more transparent and accountable digital environment.
The Mobile Observation Toolkit
This toolkit, developed through the Australian Ad Observatory project at ADM+S, has been used to map emerging trends in political advertising across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. In the lead-up to the 2025 Australian federal election this May, this toolkit helped researchers examine third-party advertising that often masquerades as grassroots activism. This addresses critical risks to transparency and democratic accountability.
The Data Download Package (DDP) is another data donation approach which enables users to securely contribute their personal data from digital platforms. These methods extend data access beyond traditional APIs and offer researchers robust alternatives for platform observability.
Australian Social media monitoring
The AIO have also been working on a range of existing API tools with updates to social media collection tools. The Australian social media dashboard includes new visualisations to large datasets and a secure and easy login system (CILogon) researchers can access using their university address. The AIO has also upgraded the Realtime Analytics Platform for Interactive Datamining (RAPID) which provides real time access to social media data from around the world.
Web Archiving tool
Currently in Beta, the installable Web Archiving tool can record and store websites for research and managing archives’ metadata.
Over the past year, the AIO has expanded its community engagement, international presence, and collaborative networks through a range of activities. From the creative “Data Mystics” stall at the Woodford Folk Festival, where the public explored digital identities and data ethics, to international conferences in Germany, Denver, Singapore, and Zurich.
The AIO now has 15 team members based at 6 partner universities, as well as 10 partner and research leads engaged in the project.
Team members of the AIO will be present at various conferences over the next few months including the ARDC Skills summit, Data Donation Symposium Germany, eResearch 2025, Australian Political Science Association (APSA), Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Communication Association (AANZCA), the Humanities, Social Sciences and Indigenous Research Data Commons (HASS&I RDC) Symposium, and the Digital Humanities Australia conference.
As digital platforms evolve in complexity and influence, the Australian Internet Observatory aims to provide an enduring foundation for research that is technically robust, ethically sound, and democratically relevant.
AIO is a co-investment partnership with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) through the HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons (DOI: 10.3565/hjrp-b141). The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
Read more about AIO’s First Year in Review: The AIO’s progress, tools, and partnerships
