Facebook News
META
Once Mark Zuckerberg publicly announced that Facebook would be developing a brand new News product, we were given 6 months to create something that had never existed before.
mission and principles
mission and principles
User problem
People identify “news” in a variety of ways. Subsequently, they are unable to clearly distinguish high quality news from “fake” news. At the same time, the majority of news consumption is happening on social media channels which has marginalized small publications and individual news consumers. The result is mass consumption of low, quality unverifiable news with a lack of variation.
The strategy
Start with a team mission that is rooted in news industry values and the responsibility we hold toward the people who use our product. Then create a set of actionable principles and values that can be used to inform the content algorithm ranking, elevating highest quality news sources whilst catering to the needs and interests of local communities and individual consumers.
Role: Content design lead
Deliverables
Research strategy
Team mission
Product naming
Principles and values
Stakeholder approvals
External facing content for Facebook News page
Independant Journalist Index
User problem
We strongly believed that Facebook should not endeavor to define “news”, journalists or journalism alone. We reached out to industry experts like news and journalism associations and academic and research institutions. Independent journalists were most affected by social media and we wanted to remedy this issue.
We discovered 3 things:
Even among reputable organizations, there is no universally accepted definition for both journalists or journalism.
The definitions that do exist are vague and at times, paradoxical.
These definitions rely on equally vague and paradoxical definitions of news.
One thing all organizations agreed on was that the #1 priority for journalists is safety.
The strategy
In order to create a way for independent journalists to have visibility for their work, we needed to find a way to verify their credentials and their work. The strategy was multi-pronged:
Define news
Define and account for digital literacy
Identify the scope of threat to journalists safety and how we could create products to help
Create a new journalist registration category for individual news contributors
Create a verification process including human review guidelines
Create a safety measure that allows journalists to “black out” their social media presence in high conflict situations
Offer Facebook protection as well as expanding those protections to journalists Instagram accounts.
Offer Fast tracked blue badge verification
Create a tool which helps journalist source and monitor news across social media platforms and early access to additional tools (Bulletin)
