Facebook, Twitter join the First Draft coalition
Social media giants Facebook and Twitter are now part of the 'First Draft news', a coalition of media and technology organizations aimed at improving social media news-gathering. This comes amid concerns over Facebook's role in sometimes allowing misinformation to proliferate. According to Jenni Sargent, the Managing Director of First Draft coalition, the platform would be officially launched by the end of October 2016.
Social media as news source
Global communications have been transformed in the past decade owing to the emergence of social media. Social media is the second biggest source of news for most people after TV. With its reach - Facebook is visited by 1.7 billion people every month, and Twitter has 140 million daily users, social media plays a major role as an information distributor.
What is First Draft news?
Backed by Google, First Draft News was formed in June 2015 and launched its news site in November 2015. Its founding members include BellingCat, Eyewitness Media Hub, Reported.ly, Meedan, Storyful, and Verification Junkie. The coalition was formed to tackle fake news and improve the quality of social media information. First Draft aims to improve online news and promote news literacy among social media users.
Media and Technology partners at First Draft
Every partner of First Draft network is "committed to sharing knowledge, developing policies, and devising training in how journalists use the social web to find and report news". The network has more than 30 international media partners including - New York Times, YouTube, the Telegraph, Agence France-Presse, the Washington Post, Aljazeera, Amnesty International, BuzzFeed News, European Journalism Centre, ABC News (Australia), CNN, etc.
Instance of erroneous reporting by Facebook
Growing popularity of social media platforms also gave way for misinformation to seep into the news stories. In one of the recent examples, Facebook erroneously promoted a story claiming that Fox News had fired its anchor Megyn Kelly for backing "Hillary Clinton". Facebook faced criticism over this story. Fox news went on to call it an 'egregious mistake'.
