Twitter to start livestreaming local breaking news events

The livestream will be broadcast on a small window next to the Twitter timeline.

Twitter had livestreamed the recent US highschool shooting on its platform (REUTERS)

In a bid to stop the spread of fake news, Twitter will soon live stream news, in a window next to the users' timelines, whenever a major incident takes place.

In a first such test, Twitter live-streamed footage from Miami's WSVN 7 as the media outlet covered the shooting at a Florida school in which 17 people were killed on Wednesday.

More than 50,000 Twitter viewers watched the live broadcast.

According to a report in BuzzFeed News late on Thursday, the micro-blogging platform will rely on partnerships with regional news stations to select the footage to be live-streamed.

"We're continuing to work on new ways we can surface credible and relevant information to help people stay informed.

"By pairing live video with the conversation on Twitter, there is no faster way to see what's happening in the world," Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter video GM, told BuzzFeed News.

Clicking on the video will open up a stream of algorithmically chosen tweets about the event.

When users click on live videos on their timelines, they will be taken to a custom timeline that "places algorithmically selected tweets about the news event next to it".

Facebook and Twitter have both been facing backlash for the spread of fake news online. Recently, Facebook had announced that it would start prioritising 'local news' for its users in the US.

Facebook will start showing its users in US more stories from news sources in their cities or towns. Facebook plans to roll out this initiative in more countries later this year.