Facebook takes on a bigger role in journalism
Company envisions its engineers working with news organisations to create new subscription models
Facebook is launching a journalism project aimed at strengthening its ties with media organisations to help them expand their audiences, come up with new products and generally promote trusted news in today’s “post-truth” era.
The project is in its early stages and light on specifics. But the company envisions Facebook engineers working with news organisations to create new ways of telling stories and novel advertising or subscription models, right from the early stages of development. The company also wants to help promote “news literacy” and support local news.
“It’s very early in the process but certainly something we are really excited about,” said Dave Merrell, lead product manager at The Washington Post, which is among the news organisations working with Facebook. “We worked with Facebook on numerous products over the years, but often were not involved in the product development stage.”
With “Instant Articles,” launched in 2015, the social network hosts and displays news items directly instead of pointing users to news websites. Such instant stories load faster on Facebook than those on outside links, and Facebook gives participating publishers a cut of the advertising revenue from Instant Articles.
Browsing habits
But publishers also lose some of their ability to connect with their readers, understand their browsing habits and direct them to other stories and video. So Facebook plans to start testing a new feature of Instant Articles that will show readers multiple stories from the same news organisation.
As part of that change, Facebook could also improve the way its algorithms recommend other stories — that “people also shared” — to users. Its automated system has sometimes suggested purported news articles that included unverified information or that were only marginally related to the original story.
The move suggests Facebook is starting to accept its outsize influence over how people get their news, even if it’s not a traditional publisher itself. According to the Pew Research Center, more than 40 per cent of American adults get news on Facebook. And it follows the company’s announcement last month that it is taking new measures to curb the spread of fake and misleading news on its huge and influential network.