In a new post Monday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg writes that the company is making a series of updates to show more high quality, trusted content, including exposing users to more local news.

Why it matters: One of Zuckerberg’s stated goals for 2018 is to make sure Facebook stays true to its mission of helping connect people to stay civically engaged, and this move follows a series of blog posts discussing the role Facebook plays in democracy and civic engagement.

• “Research suggests that reading local news is directly correlated with civic engagement,” Zuckerberg writes. “People who know what’s happening around them are more likely to get involved and help make a difference.”

This news comes amid recent changes to the News Feed that aim to prioritize more “trustworthy, informative, and local” news from “trusted sources.”

• Last week Facebook announced it will use data from user surveys about which news sources they find trustworthy to inform their News Feed algorithm.
• The company has previously pushed to give local news publishers more resources, like free accessto the social measurement tool, CrowdTangle.
• A Parsely study earlier this year found that Facebook overwhelmingly drives lifestyle and entertainment news traffic, while Google largely drives business, tech and sports news traffic.