In an editorial published in USA Today on May 27th, Laura Edelson, a Ph.D. student at Tandon, called out the limitations of Facebook’s voluntary efforts to reveal who is behind political ads, noting that they lack, “adequate information on how ads are directed toward specific demographics and groups of people.” Co-authored with Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, the editorial calls for greater application of “tried and true techniques from the practice of cybersecurity,” to “help us strengthen democracy by revealing vulnerabilities in disclosure of online political ads.”

The editorial, which can be read in its entirety here, draws from Edelson’s research initiatives in online political communication, and her work with Tandon faculty member Damon McCoy on the Online Political Ads Transparency Project. The goal of the Transparency project is to “build tools to collect and archive political advertising data,” and to “work with reporters and institutions to provide our data collection tools and raw data collected to provide insight into online political advertising.”