Digital Gatekeeping: New platforms, producers and complexities

When the concept of gatekeeping was first introduced into field of journalism studies – by way of David Manning White’s seminal article “The ‘Gate Keeper’: A Case Study in the Selection of News” (1950) – it described a one-way linear process ending at the desk of the final gatekeeper, the wire editor. White’s study has been heavily criticised for both its theoretical, methodological, and empirical shortcomings, but the concept of gatekeeping has evolved into becoming a key concept within journalism studies and it continues to capture the imagination of new generations of journalism researchers. This chapter reviews the most important works within this field, describes and discusses recent developments in the news media, and proceeds to present a theoretical model for understanding gatekeeping-processes in our digital era. This model entails three distinct, but interconnected types of gatekeeping that in each case is associated with particular platforms for news and their producers and processes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the ramifications of each of these types of gatekeeping and how they might inspire the ways in which journalistic practitioners and researchers approach gatekeeping processes in the future.