Facebook to Help 'Source' Questions for Presidential Debate

While the presidential contest is what the entire country is eagerly looking forward to this November, Facebook, along with others have decided to help "source" questions online for the town hall-style debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, The Hill reports.

Proposing the public participation initiative undertaken along with Facebook, Janet Brown, executive director of Commission on Presidential Debates, announced Wednesday night that anyone will be able to submit a question online.

However, there is no kind of assurance that the questions will be aired, she added.

"The moderators of the debate, ABC's Martha Raddatz and CNN's Anderson Cooper, will be under no obligation to use them," Brown said.

Brown claimed that such an initiative involving the masses for a general election debate through the internet had never been done before.

The commission, which has been brainstorming since April, on methods to have a more inclusive approach this general election, declared social media as the most suitable platform, The Hill reports.

According to The Observer, the panel earlier decided that "half of the questions in the town hall debate will be posed directly by citizen participants and the other half by the moderator based on topics of broad public interest as reflected in social media and other sources."

This unique move, however, is not new to the news industry. In 2007, CNN conducted a debate which featured Americans putting forward their questions through YouTube videos.

It did not take long for Google, Facebook and Twitter to pick up from there. The networking giants roped in journalists, strategists and political operatives to try and testify the new means for a broader outreach.

While it maybe recalled that Google, AOL and Yahoo were all involved in promoting public participation through digital means during the 2012 debates, the effort was widely criticized for being all about talks only.

This year around, the platforms promise more.

Facebook has gained rights as "exclusive social media sponsor" of the first and third presidential debates.

Snapchat too will cover each debate with one of their Live Story features, while Microsoft is working with "PBS NewsHour" to launch a website where the public can watch debates from past years.