For a detailed examination of states with either no or substantial opposition to the ruling party BJP (Vaishnav, 2023), we utilized the latter search category, downloading a total of 2,257,844 Ads in total. Our focus was on Mizoram and Telangana with 334 and 638 Ads respectively, as these two states fit the ‘no or substantial opposition’ criteria most.

Further investigation into states like Mizoram and Telangana, characterized by either no or substantial opposition to the ruling BJP, reveals that some pages operate from different countries with minimal personal details disclosed. Moreover, the advertisements in Telangana and Mizoram from our dataset remain largely neutral with voting slogans and politicians visiting different villages and places of worship. This auditing investigation helped us discover that BJP and Congress politicians have slightly different types of approaches when it comes to advertising their campaigns on Facebook with the former focusing on heavy religious propaganda and the latter discrediting BJP or making neutral posts.

It is imperative to mention that these are just preliminary findings and might not represent the true picture of the pages that we have retrieved from the Ads Library. Starting in 2019, Meta has taken steps to curb fake profiles and released advertising policies applicable to both Facebook and Instagram. This has also been implemented in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil. Facebook product manager Sarah Schiff and Shivnath Thukral, the company's public policy director in India, expressed their commitment to establishing a new standard of transparency and authenticity for political advertising. In a statement, they emphasized that significant changes are being made ahead of India's general elections, emphasizing the platform's dedication to enhancing the integrity of political advertising on their platforms (Iyengar, 2019). These measures have been taken to prevent an outcome similar to the 2014 India general election, where deceptive social media tactics were used to influence its citizens. During 2014, major political parties in India took advantage and used techniques to gain fake likes, comments, shares and reactions. Nowadays, social media is used to demonstrate how big the influence is of these politicians, and although it does not directly help acquire real power, social media has become a medium to rise up in the ranks (Wong and Petersen, 2023).

As shown by our findings, political Ads on Facebook seem to be transparent and are most likely run by the political parties themselves. Many electoral candidates can be found on Facebook and whilst they all run their political party on social media, not all of them use the same methods or have the same target audience. The Meta Ads Library and its transparency center allowed us to check each advertiser profile, giving us information on their activity, target group, ad serving and disclaimers on profiles not following guidelines.

How active a political party is on social media or whether they use misinformation and fake news can endanger or change political outcomes. One of the most notorious examples of this was the presidential election in the United States in 2016, as Donald Trump's digital media director stated: “Facebook and Twitter were the reason we won this thing", even Trump himself attributed his success to his social media account (Müller, Schwarz and Fujiwara, 2020). The political environment in India's social media has numerous ad impressions, the lowest amount alone had impressions exceeding 300 thousand. The amount spent on the service ad is 100 rupees, which is approximately 1 euro. This indicates that India's Facebook has influence and has helped to reach and engage with a larger number of voters in a short amount of time and thus it is successful at polarizing politics (Adhana and Saxena, 2018). The Meta Ads Library provided an overview of the most active candidates, and it was apparent that these political parties are really active in rural areas. They primarily target small audiences, which most likely indicates that demographic target groups who are at a disadvantage, are being persuaded by these political parties through emotional connection and they make voters feel more directly involved with the campaign through posts, comments, and likes. Unlike traditional media, Facebook allows politicians to actively engage with potential voters and followers by exposing them to their campaign strategies. Facebook sharing can ultimately create a personal connection through behind-the-scenes views of their campaign (Narasimhamurthy, 2014). One of those behind-the-scenes connections strategies is the use of religious beliefs during their campaign. There was a common denominator on the candidate profiles we discovered through the Meta Ads library: religion was used as a medium to approach and connect with voters. Essentially their campaign strategy was the documentation of candidates visiting temples and practicing religious traditions, which were later scattered through Facebook.