Google and Facebook are to work together in order to stop the circulation of fake news in France during upcoming presidential election.
The US search engine and social media site are taking part in CrossCheck, an industry coalition which includes Agence France-Presse, Buzzfeed News, Le Monde and other French media outlets to tackle fake news stories.
The nonprofit group First Draft News, of which Google News Lab is a founding partner, will lead the CrossCheck project to help the public make sense of what and who to trust in their social media feeds, web searches and general online news consumption in the coming months.
The 17 organisations that make up CrossCheck would identify and verify content circulating publicly online, whether it is photographs, videos, memes, comment threads and news sites, with the French presidential election as its primary focus, the group said.
Facebook will provide tools and undertake media literacy efforts to explain the verification process and keep audiences up to date with confirmed and disputed election related data.
The project will use several tools and technology platforms including CrowdTangle, a tool that will help early discovery and monitoring of social content that is appropriate to the election; Google Trends to surface searches about candidates and campaign claims in real time.
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It will also use Meedan’s Check collaborative verification platform and Spike, NewsWhip’s technology to spot and predict breakout stories, social posts and viral events.
Hearken’s Engagement Management System will collect and respond to questions submitted by the public.
Users will be allowed to submit questions and the initiative will investigate links to disputed sites and social content.
CrossCheck brings together expertise from media and technology industries to make sure hoaxes, rumors and false claims are swiftly debunked, and misleading or confusing stories are reported correctly.
The first round of the 2017 French presidential election is scheduled to be held in April.
