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April 1, 2015updated 15 Apr 2015 6:36pm

Press Association in deal with Facebook to provide UK general election page

By Robert Griffiths

Press Association has partnered with Facebook produce its 2015 UK general election page, starting this week.

Since Monday, PA’s politics and social team have filled Facebook’s UK Politics page with what it calls “the best election stories and updates from across the web".

The page contains links to news websites, political parties and also features content from Facebook’s own users.

Darren Waters, head of social data and graphics at PA, told Press Gazette: “We have seen that people are increasingly getting news from social media, and Facebook is a main driver of this, with 26 million users in the UK.”

“The page has 300,000 likes, and we hope to build on this to create a huge community of politics addicts.”

“We will be positing around 20-25 posts throughout the course of the day.

“Users will see pages on news feeds as the would see friends posts throughout the days as they use Facebook, and we will put up a mixture of serious pieces and fun lighter articles.

“Facebook’s analytics allow us to see at what people look at and share and will help us choose content.”

“We are only a few days in but what we’ve seen is incredibly encouraging, a real boost to the engagement of the page.”

Nick Wrenn, Facebook’s Head of Media Partnerships in Europe, the Middle East and Africa said: "PA is an ideal news organisation to run the Facebook UK Politics page because of its commitment to impartiality and balance, and its ability to curate quality content from a wide range of journalists, analysts and public figures.

“Millions rely on Facebook every day as a source for news, shareable and entertaining content.

“This page will be a place for people to like, comment and share all the latest updates from the UK election.”

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