It has been slightly more than a year since the Australian Internet Observatory (AIO) began its mission to build research infrastructure that can support the independent, ethical, and large-scale study of digital platforms. In that time, we have focused on developing technical tools, collaborative research models, and international partnerships, laying the groundwork for a more transparent and accountable digital environment.

As we continue, we are excited to share an update on our journey, including new tools, research outcomes, outreach, engagement, and our incredible team that makes it all possible.

New tools and developments

Our Mobile Observation Toolkit 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 us examine third-party advertising that often masquerades as grassroots activism. This addresses critical risks to transparency and democratic accountability.

Sample of the election ads captured using the Mobile Observation Toolkit.

The Data Download Package (DDP) approach 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. AIO’s DDP tools are currently being trialled with the For You project - an ARC Discovery research project studying TikTok experiences of Australian users. We are currently working on being able to harvest Instagram data via DDPs. Let us know if you would like to trial these approaches!

We have also been working on improving a range of existing API tools. Updates to the API social media harvesting system AIReD, provide new visualisations to large datasets and now has a secure and easy login system (CILogon) using your university address. The AIO team has published a more detailed description of AIReD and its functionality on our website.

We also have a second approach to accessing social media data and analytics upon request. The RAPID dashboard is up and running and ready for testing and use.

Finally, we have developed a beta version of an installable Web Archiving tool to record and store websites for research and managing archives’ metadata. An updated version will be launched soon. It complements the existing website recording tools, allowing researchers to create local, replayable, and analysable copies of what they see in the browser window.

Community Engagement and Data Mystics

Over the past year the AIO team has presented our work a range of academic as well as more unusual venues. In January this year, we partnered with the QUT Digital Media Research Centre at the Woodford Folk Festival. The Data Mystics stall invited festival-goers to explore their digital identities through personalised "data readings." This experience sparked conversations about data ethics, online tracking, and algorithmic influence, demonstrating the power of public engagement and its contribution to our understanding of what we can bring to a project. It also served as a model for future outreach activities that merge creative engagement with data literacy.

What type of online personality are you? The Data Mystics team help you find out while you donate your data.

Presenting Our Work Internationally

Presenting our infrastructure work to international audiences has helped position AIO as a globally relevant contributor to the development of ethical digital research tools. Our team has been travelling extensively to share our research, build international collaborations, and ensure that more researchers become familiar with our work, creating new areas for engagement and future growth. Some of these events included:

GESIS, Germany: Professor Daniel Angus presented on privacy-preserving methods for tracking online advertising during a visiting fellowship at the GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. ICA, Denver: At the 75th International Communication Association conference, Professor Angus chaired a session on data donation ethics and presented on our mobile advertising toolkit. IAMCR 2025, Singapore: Dr. Amanda Lawrence presented "Towards Large-Scale Research Infrastructure for Digital Platform Observability," a paper co-authored with Professor Julian Thomas outlining our vision for independent platform monitoring. CVMR25, Zurich: Nicholas Carah and Jean Burgess showcased their long-running Image Machine project and our data donation and screen tracking methods, which are already being deployed in major research initiatives.

These presentations have helped define AIO’s contribution to the growing global field of computational social science infrastructure - focused on real-time, ethically sourced, and citizen-led platform research. We hope to build on this global community of interest over the next few years to collaborate on tools, methods and data sharing for great digital platform observability.

Building Communities of Practice

We have also been focused on building skills and fostering collaboration across the Australian research sector. Thus, at the ARDC HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons Summer School, Professor Daniel Angus led a session on 'Data Donation Methods and Tools for Social Data,' providing hands-on training for researchers. We also presented at the AusSTS 2025 Conference, where Professor Richard Sinnott introduced the Australian Internet Observatory Research Dashboard (AIReD), and Dr. Amanda Lawrence and Dr. Bogdan Mamaev presented at the Making & Doing session to several groups of Australian academics interested in state-of-the-art methods and their applications. At ResBaz 2025, our team hosted sessions on making data donation and web archiving tools more accessible for researchers across all disciplines. We have also arranged training events and presented our work to our partners, such as the Alfred Deakin Institute and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Digital Child.

These sessions have contributed to a growing community of practice around observability infrastructure, with new collaborators trialling our tools in domains ranging from media studies and politics to public health and Indigenous data governance.

We are now working on developing online resources and training videos and looking forward to running a series of workshops at the ARDC HASS and Indigenous Summer School in February 2026.

What's Next?

We now have 15 team members based at 6 partner universities, as well as 10 partner and research leads engaged in the project. Read more about the AIO team here. It is very exciting to be working with such a talented and committed team!

We will be present at various conferences over the next few months including the ARDC Skills summit, International Communications Association conference, 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, Digital Humanities Australia conference. Then in 2026, we kick things off with the ARDC HASS and Indigenous RDC Summer School! Please come and say hello.

Looking ahead, AIO’s next phase includes releasing the AIO Workbench for researchers to set up, run and analyse digital platform research projects using AIO tools. Also in the pipeline are making browser extensions and the Web archive visualisation toolkit available; a release of cleaned, curated public datasets; test environments for secure synthetic data exploration; and research dashboards for large-scale data analysis.

Our long-term research infrastructure planning includes expanding our ability to capture data from a wider range of sources including sensors and the internet of things, using digital twins and LLMs in new ways and operating through Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). This aligns with Australia’s emerging national research infrastructure strategy, where we aim to contribute tools, standards, and research capabilities that support more democratic and accountable uses of technology.

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. We invite researchers, public institutions, and communities to continue shaping this infrastructure with us.

Contact us: aio@internetobservatory.org.au

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