Gate-Watching In Social Media

A prominent notion discussed by scholars is gate-watching, a concept that is considered to replace traditional gatekeeping in journalism. The establishment of the gatekeeping theory can be attributed to White who researched the ‘reasons given by a newspaper editor for discarding possible news issues’ (White 1950). However, the emergence of web 2.0 has rendered such studies irrelevant, when considering the increased blurring of roles between journalists and an audience. Scholars are now suggesting that a new concept, termed gate-watching, will ‘replace traditional gatekeeping journalistic roles’ (Shoemaker et al 2001). Bearing in mind the previous limited space of conventional media, gatekeeping ‘refers to the important role of journalists to select whether or not to admit a particular news story to pass through the gates of a news medium into the news channel’ (McQuail 1994, p. 213). However, the unlimited space offered by the internet, which allows for the active participation of the audience, makes Shoemakers discussion more useful in contemporary studies. Bruns, bringing together ideas from previous works by Shoemaker and Wrigley, identifies that the ‘collaborative participation of users in news selection’ (Bruns 2006), is a distinguishing feature of gate-watching, and reflects the changing role of journalists.

Though the impact of social media on news creation has been the subject of much research, such as Moyos’ view of ‘audience driven selection’ (Moyo 2009), social media curation has not been investigated in an adequate manner. The article by Giardina et al attempts to fill this gap by studying the extent in which social media curation can be considered as gate-watching. The analysis acknowledged that social media curation...

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...journalists. Furthermore, the overwhelming consensus of scholars in the field of communication is that there has been a blurring of roles between journalists and their audience, with citizen journalism now an important part of the live broadcast of news. Finally, this review revealed that media convergence is negatively impacting on the journalist’s ability to verify and authenticate sources, as well as challenging the notion of breaking news. Along with this, it is clear that commentary is varied in relation to the extent of the implications of convergence on journalism practice, and must continue to be studied and analysed in order to better understand the future impacts of web 2.0. This field of inquiry is important in understanding the changing landscape of communication, and how journalists can continue to adapt to maintain their authoritative role in society.