Introducing ‘Signal’ for Facebook and Instagram to help journalists gather content

It has been proven that social media sites are the new news sources, and Facebook has made a step to make their site and Instagram a better tool for journalists to use in their media content creation and research work by introducing Signal.

In a company blog, Facebook Director for Media Partnerships Andy Mitchell wrote “We’re excited to introduce Signal, for Facebook and Instagram, a free discovery and curation tool for journalists who want to source, gather, and embed newsworthy content from Facebook and Instagram, across news, culture, entertainment, sports, and more—all in one place.”

This was after feedback from many journalists who had asked for easier tools by Facebook for them to source stories, see trending stories and images as well.

Signal can be used to search for a topic a journalist wants more information on, or a person being talked about the most, giving real-time feed.

It also gives rankings and percentages of the conversation around a particular topic or person on Facebook or Instagram.

The metrics tools in Signal can also be saved and used by journalists/media houses to add to their reports for analytics purposes.

Andy Mitchell added, ” Signal is now available at no cost to journalists and leverages our own Media Solutions APIs, as well as third-party APIs including CrowdTangle and Storyful who each power feeds within the product.”

You can find out more about Signal by clicking here.

(All images courtesy of Facebook)