Gate Keeping Theory In Online Journalism One of the most easily accessible theories is the journalist as gate-keeper, a role that clearly seems threatened by a medium in which users can put their fingers on virtually any bit of information that interests them. "No other medium," one observer has suggested, "has ever given individual people such an engaged role in the movement of information and opinion or such a proprietary interest in the medium itself" [(Katz, 1994,50)]. Though the term "gate keeper" originated with sociologist Kurt Lewin, it was first applied directly to journalists by White, who studied the choices made by a wire service editor at a small Midwestern newspaper. "Mr. Gates," who selected a relatively limited number of stories for publication and rejected the rest, saw to it that "the community shall hear as a fact only those events which the newsman, as the representative of his culture, believes to be true" [(White, 1950, 390)].
Subsequent studies have indicated that the journalist's self-perception as the person who decides what
people need to know is deeply ingrained. Indeed, it has been suggested that the identification and
dissemination of what is worth knowing is the journalist's most basic and most vital task in a democratic
society, in which information plays a central role [(Janowitz, 1975)]. It would seem that the notion of
gate keeping goes right out the window with the Internet. The 'Net, and its user-friendly World Wide Web
graphical overlay, is the best example yet of a postmodern medium; it provides the opportunity for creation of a highly personal pastiche, in which all importance, all meaning is relative to an individual perspective. Users can find anything they want online. They don't need someone else to do the picking and choosing. They don't need someone else to decide what's important. They don't need someone else to digest and package their information. They don't need someone else to interpret that information for them. Or do they?
Gate-keeping theory may provide a more valuable basis for study in this new media environment than it first appears. "What happens when the gate keeper goes away?" is not the only question to be asked. It might not even be the best question. Although few published studies have specifically addressed gatekeeping in the online environment, there is some evidence that journalists see that function as evolving and adapting rather than disappearing. A study by Singer [(1997)] indicates people inside the newsroom are modifying their definition of the gate keeper to incorporate notions of both quality control and sensemaking. In particular, they see their role as credible interpreters of an unprecedented volume of available information as fundamental to their value -- even their survival -- in a new media environment. Her findings are in line with the most recent survey by Weaver and Wilhoit [(1996)], who found that journalists continue to see their primary role as interpreters, rather than mere gatherers and
disseminators, of information.
Those findings raise interesting follow-up questions for interactive media researchers to pursue. Do the growing numbers of journalists now working online also value the interpretive role? If so, how might they see themselves fulfilling it? Another approach might be to examine whether the real or perceived need for a gate-keeping or sense- making role -- among both journalists and members of the public -- increases or decreases as the amount of information expands and people are empowered to make their own news judgments. Although the evidence is still largely anecdotal, there is some indication that online user -- despite much-publicized exclamations of elation at their new freedom from media control
over information -- may actually be looking for some sort of gate keeper. For instance, with the Communication Decency Act thrown out as unconstitutional, one of the hottest topics for Internet access
providers today is how to keep children from seeing certain content online. The perceived solution, so far, has largely been a technological one: filtering software such as Cyber Sitter or Net Nanny to carry out, in effect, editorial decisions about what is appropriate and what is not. It seems that people do still want someone or something to make -- or help them make -- judgments about content. Or consider "knowbots," the little personalizable pieces of software that will go rooting around like truffle-hunting
pigs in the incomprehensible, and exponentially expanding, vastness of the online universe to find content that matches users' identified interests. In addition to help making judgments, people are searching for help in finding information. Indeed, they also may be looking for help of a more human nature -- from, in fact, the very journalists whose influence they can, if they choose, escape online. Aside from the search engines, the most popular and widely used sites on the Web include many of those produced by employees of traditional media outlets, from CNN to USA Today to ESPN.People are even willing to pay $49 a year for access to the online Wall Street Journal. In other words, they are turning to their favorite selectors, organizers and packagers of information -- ones whose brand identity they know and, at least to some extent, trust.
Matt Drudge, the pseudonymous online scribe who boasts of having no editor, also has no credibility. Michael Schudson began his recent book, The Power of News [(1995)], by inviting readers to imagine a world in which everyone is able to deliver information directly to everyone else through a computer, a world in which everyone can be his or her own journalist. He suggests that people would quickly become desperate to figure out which sources were legitimate and would soon be begging for help in sorting through the endless information. Furthermore, he said, they would prefer to have that help come from a source that was at least relatively savvy about what all those other people were talking
about, relatively nonpartisan and therefore relatively trustworthy. Journalism, in short, would pretty
quickly be reinvented.
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