Early Theories of Mass Communication — 4. Gatekeeping
The Gatekeeping Theory
The gatekeeping theory is another major theory of mass communication. Shoemaker, Vos and Reese (2009) refer to gatekeeping as “the process of selecting, writing, editing, positioning, scheduling, repeating, and otherwise massaging information to become news” (p. 73). The idea of gatekeeping in fact did not initially concern mass communication. Instead, it emerged from the study about food.
During World War II, Kurt Lewin was asked by the American National Research Council to investigate Americans’ food selection process. This research was important for the US because food specifically cuts of meats were in short supply during wartime and insufficient food supply affected the military force who was put as the nation’s top priority. The government then tried to persuade American families to eat other kinds of meat e.g. organs like livers or hearts suggested to have equal nutritional values as traditional cuts of meats like steaks or pork chops. Lewin therefore investigated families’ food selection process especially how decisions were made in the food selection process from two main sources: home gardens and purchases. Lewin found that there were specific criteria used to select or reject food items, and the persons who apply these criteria were identified as gatekeepers. It is important to note that not all gatekeepers, housewives, in this case, used the same criteria to make decisions whether or not to open the gate to let the food through to the household. The criteria used depends on, for instance, cultural groups the housewives belong to. Lewin suggested that not only is it important to identify who are gatekeepers but also to understand the characteristics of the gatekeepers i.e. their psychology to design the appropriate, persuasive campaigns targeted at them (DeFleur, 2017).
Following Lewin’s conception of gatekeeper, in 1949 when newspapers were a dominant mass media, a journalist Davide White applied the gatekeeping idea to explore the selection process from the news perspective. White interviewed an editor of a newspaper whom he saw as responsible for the gatekeeping tasks by selecting and shaping stories before letting them through to the public. This was also the starting point of other studies of how news stories are screened, selected, modified, and finally presented to the public (DeFluer, 2017, Heath, R. L., & Bryant, J., 2000). There is a question of what kind of news or content can attract public attention. Many practitioners or journalists refer to the news values in response to this question and to help gatekeepers decide which story is worth allowing through the gate. The more a story consists of these news values qualities, the more it is likely to pass through the gate. Key features of news values include impact, proximity, timeliness, prominence, conflict, currency, and bizarre (ref) as shown in table below.
In addition, Shoemaker (2009) introduced the hierarchy of influences proposing other components to explain how media messages are constructed and what affect the production of media messages that reach the public under the gatekeeping concept. The hierarchy of influences model explains the factors influencing the construction of media messages in different levels from individual to social levels.
At an individual level, the content or message is designed by the influence of subjective decisions of individuals. Secondly, the message is restricted by agreement, procedures, regulations, or other requirements e.g. deadlines, professional writing, and editing, newsworthy selecting process, for instance, at the media routine level. Further at the organization level, the selection process of media messages differs in different organizations depending on the organization’s goals and the sector they belong to. Lastly, the gatekeepers must take into account the culture, ideology, and social structures at the social institution level, and to some extent, all organizations have a similar type of influence such as stakeholders and government regulations at the social level system (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014). All in all, the theory proposed that gatekeepers are the ones who decide and select what to be presented to the public, therefore they determine what is to become the public’s social reality, and their view of the world (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009).
Are there gatekeepers in the digital era?
It is argued that the conception of gatekeeping is no longer valid. For instance, the co-founder of Facebook, Shawn Parker, stated that “the development of the modern media environment has meant the removal of the media gatekeepers”. However, Shoemaker and Vos (2009) posit that in the digital media environment individuals specifically, any internet users can be gatekeepers by passing the news stories based on their interests and own criteria (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009; St. John & Johnson, 2012).
Critiques
There is a claim that, in the digital era, everyone is a gatekeeper. Due to the extensive variety of accessibilities specifically the high use of social media, it is difficult to distinguish professional gatekeepers (e.g. journalists, editors) from public opinions (e.g. opinion leaders, social influencers, internet users). Additionally, stories of events happening in the society are now passed through any media outlets an individual has in hand to the public without the selection process of professional gatekeepers. Unlike traditional gatekeeping conception, in today’s society audiences play roles in influencing news media messages i.e. news contents as well as controlling the news segmentation, diffusion and production. This means the construction of media messages is largely oriented on audiences’ preferences (Groshek, J., & Tandoc, E., 2017; Shoemaker & Reese, 2014). Although reliability and credibility of information by the gatekeeping process are still required to provide truthful or factual information especially among online sources, it is argued that gatekeeping, under certain criteria, could translate to the distorted media message and distorted view of the world.
panitcha 6 @ gmail.com / Aug 2020
