Facebook has announced a new program that aims to establish stronger ties with news organisations, promote news literacy and provide further training and tools for journalists.
Dubbed the Facebook Journalism Project, the new initiative will see the social media giant collaborating deeper with news organisations from the early stages of the product development process.
This includes delivering new storytelling formats and exploring additional video ad options.
Facebook’s director of product, Fidji Simo, revealed in a blog post that the project will also offer further training and support for journalists who use Facebook Live to report and discover news as easily as possible.
“We’re launching the ability for Page administrators to designate specific journalists as contributors, giving them the ability to go live on behalf of the Page – a change designed to make such reporting more flexible for newsrooms,” he said.
Furthermore, Simo said Facebook will work with third-party organisations to promote news literacy both on and off the platform “to help people in our community have the information they need to make decisions about which sources to trust”.
Simo also reaffirmed Facebook’s continuing efforts to curb news hoaxes, with the platform having laid out a plan to combat the issue in December following months of criticism for its role in spreading intentionally deceptive stories during the US presidential election.
