French journalists are teaming up with Google and Facebook to help fight propaganda and "fake news" ahead of the country's elections, mirroring efforts already underway in the US and Germany.
French daily Le Monde says it is one of eight media organisations working with social networking site Facebook to fact-check questionable content ahead of France's upcoming presidential election.
At the same time, nonprofit First Draft News says it is working with Google's News Lab is to launch CrossCheck, a verification project aimed at helping French voters "make sense of what and who to trust online."
Google and Facebook have been under increasing scrutiny over their role in the spread of hoaxes, conspiracy theories and propaganda - sometimes referred to as "fake news."
Some argue that fake news helped secure the victory of Donald Trump, whose false allegations about former President Barack Obama helped lay the foundation for his own run for high office.
"We'll see a real wave of fake news in the coming days," said Alain Rabatel, a professor of linguistics at the University of Lyon 1 who has written about fact-checking in French journalism.
Rabatel had guarded praise for the projects, saying journalists had to be more than just fact-checkers.
