Philip Mai

About

Connecting people, knowledge, and ideas.

Philip Mai is a Senior Researcher and Co-Director at the Social Media Lab at Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University and a co-founder of the International Conference on Social Media & Society. His research explores social media users and usage, particularly in the context of dis/misinformation, AI deepfakes, foreign interference, conspiracy theories, online toxicity, and digital political transparency.

His work and commentaries are frequently cited in scholarly publications and featured in national and international media outlets. Philip also develops research tools and dashboards, many of which are used by thousands of students and researchers globally to study public discourse and online participation. The thread that connects all of his work is building tools and platforms that help to make society more transparent. He holds a Master’s in International Relations and a Juris Doctorate in International Law from Syracuse University.


Philip has over two decades of experience working in research, communications, marketing, and project management in sectors such as academia, technology, and politics. Before joining Toronto Metropolitan University, Philip was the Projects and Communications Manager at the Norman Newman Centre for Entrepreneurship at Dalhousie University and the Research and Communications Manager at Dalhousie University Social Media Lab. While at Dalhousie, he managed numerous social media-related research projects and led efforts to raise the profile and impact of various other academic initiatives.

He currently lives in bustling downtown Toronto. In his spare time, he is an avid traveler, amateur photographer, foodie, and political junkie. If you are looking to connect with Philip, you can find him on Bluesky @philipmai.com and on X at @phmai.


On-going Projects

  • Communalytic.org is a research tool for studying online communities and online discourse – no coding is required. Communalytics provides researchers, journalists, and other stakeholders with the resources and infrastructure necessary to conduct independent research in the public interest. Users can bring their data or use one of Communalytic’s various social media data collectors. It can collect and analyze public data from various social media platforms including Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), Telegram and YouTube. Communalytic also contains a comprehensive set of built-in data analysis modules compatible with social and non-social media data. Many modules offer advanced AI features that support researchers in performing analytical tasks. These features provide relevant insights and suggestions, helping researchers make informed decisions based on their data. Researchers retain full control over the process, adding necessary context and making all final decisions.
  • PoliDashboard.org is an open-source app for tracking political advertisements on Meta-owned advertising platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. It is designed to help voters, journalists, campaign staffers, and others track the use of targeted ads related to social issues, elections, or politics. PoliDashboard offers users a near-real-time overview of when and how an advertiser, like a political party or lobbying group, spends its ad budget on Meta-owned platforms and the demographic groups it targets. The app’s primary purpose is to help enhance the transparency of paid political ads on Meta’s platforms, making them more resistant to manipulation by foreign and domestic actors—currently, PoliDashboard tracks and analyses ads from 30+ countries.
  • DeepfakesTracker.org is a portal designed to serve as a resource for policymakers, researchers, journalists, the public, and other stakeholders to track the prevalence of deepfakes and manipulated or out-of-context media and narratives. The project’s main objective is to help the public to better understand these new threats and provide citizens with the tools and knowledge to mitigate their impact on democratic societies.
  • ConflictMisinfo.org is a portal for analysts and researchers interested in studying the nature and scale of online misinformation and disinformation about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The portal features a dashboard that tracks and visualizes fact-checks about the Russia-Ukraine war from hundreds of trusted fact-checkers worldwide. Fact-checks are collected daily and auto translated into English, Ukrainian and Russian.

Old Projects

  • Netlytic.org – A text and social networks analyzer that can automatically summarize 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.
  • ByeByeTweetsapp.com – An app designed to give users more control over their Twitter data. Users can use it to curate your timeline and let your followers get to know the current you.  It can automatically bulk delete up to 3200 of your most recent tweets for free. 
  • Covid19misinfo.org – A rapid response project of the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. The aim of this project is two-fold: (1) put a spotlight on COVID-19 related misinformation and (2) to provide Canadians with timely and actionable information that we all can use to protect ourselves and our community. The portal features a dashboard that tracks and visualizes debunked misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19 from 100s of trusted fact-checkers worldwide.