You can help make political advertising more transparent by reporting ads and the associated targeting information

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

During the federal election campaign you may be targeted with political advertising such as flyers or ads on social media like Facebook or Instagram.

Politicians and other interest groups are using Facebook to tailor political advertising to specific groups, based on people’s interests – using information from Facebook such as interest in “community”, “prayer”, “same-sex marriage”, or your age and location.

And, if these ads don’t appear in your feed, it is difficult to know about them. This makes it very difficult to fact-check their content, or determine if they breach any laws around disclosure, as we saw during the the same-sex marriage survey.

We’ve also seen anonymous flyers, posters and websites used during the marriage equality postal survey, despite new laws aimed at curtailing unauthorised material.

You can help make political advertising more transparent by documenting this material, either by using our form below or our dedicated email address.

Submit photographs of material through our form or via email

For Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or another social network, please also submit screenshots of the ad in your feed using the form below, following these instructions.

Take a screenshot of the ad content with the “sponsored” text clearly visible. If this doesn’t cover all of the important ad content, feel free to then take multiple other screenshots. Take a screenshot of the ad-targeting information. On Facebook, click on the three dots “…” at the top right of the ad and select “Why am I seeing this”, and screenshot the ad-targeting information. On Twitter, click the arrow at the top right of the ad, and select “Why am I seeing this ad?” Finally, send us the screenshots using the form below (unfortunately it can only take one file at a time, so you will have to fill it out twice) or the email address.

For pamphlets or posters, please include any authorisation text if it is present.

You can email material to australia.elections@theguardian.com, or submit it with this form: