Running Head: GATEKEEPING THEORY AS APPLIED IN SOCIAL DOMAINS 1

Gatekeeping Theory as Applied in Social Domains

Name

Institution

Gatekeeping Theory as Social Media

Communication is a vital element of people's lives. People need mediums to convey their

messages to their recipients. Communication has several components, including the sender,

message, recipient, medium of communication, and feedback. Communication can be altered

when a single element of communication is interfered with. Various communication outlets have

helped with passing information to masses of people at a given time. Mass communication is

crucial in conveying messages to several people in a short time through various media.

Information has been manipulated in multiple ways using the gatekeeping theory of mass

communication. Several studies have been conducted to investigate the effect of gatekeeping on

news and social media. Researchers have examined how fake news and real news can be

distinguished using this theory. This paper investigates how the gatekeeping theory of mass

communication can be applied in various social domains.

The gatekeeping theory is fundamental in mass communication. Gatekeeping was

pioneered by a German psychologist called Kurt Lewin to understand human behavior. As the

name suggests, gatekeeping involves selecting and filtration of media items that can be

consumed at a given space or time. It falls under the category of monitoring and surveilling data.

Gatekeeping decisions are made daily to sort media items that are relevant for a specific

audience. The gatekeeping theory of mass communication allows people to keep their sanity by

consuming the most relevant content to them daily. They have the privilege to ignore the

unsurmountable additional information that requires their attention. A gatekeeper is in charge of

sorting information (Steele, 2018). They decide which information is released for consumption

by the people beyond them and which data should not be released. They are high-level decision-

makers who regulate the flow of information to a society. They filter data based on several

criteria, including professional experience, personal preference, and social influences. For
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example, gatekeepers at media houses or news outlets are the editors. They decide what should

be presented before news desks and what should not. Media houses receive lots of information

daily, but they do not broadcast all of it because of gatekeeping. They have their set of policies

and ethics through which the gatekeeper decides what is to be filtered out and what is to be

presented.

Gatekeeping is essential in distinguishing between fake news and real news. It

standardizes the value of information released. Nowadays, it is difficult to differentiate between

fake and real news. Gatekeeping can be used to distinguish between different types of content to

allow consumption of the right content. It may refer to policies and ethical standards to regulate

what the society consumes by allowing only information acceptable by the audience in a given

community. Consumers can also be gatekeepers because they have the liberty to decide what to

consume (Wallace, 2018). They create a secondary information filter. They may only use

information relevant to them at the time of consumption. People's attitude towards content is

subject to their perspectives. Individuals tend to lean on one side more than the other in debates

related to the media. Gatekeeping can manipulate the same information from different sources to

achieve various objectives or propagate certain agendas. This kind of prejudice may alter the

original information and weaken its strength.

Existing literature has analyzed mainstream media's coverage of fake news compared to

social media users in various social networks who use the term "fake news". Using topic

modeling, the study computationally analyzed over 8 million tweets and 1,350 news stories (Al-

Rawi, 2019). The findings showed that social media users practice networked gatekeeping

whereby they associate the fake news reference to the prejudice of mainstream media. On the

other hand, content from the mainstream media tends to associate fake news with social media's
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negative influence in propagating misinformation. People in social media tend to flak the

mainstream media by offering negative responses to ensure it maintains its integrity. The

mainstream media outlets are forced to review their editorial stance, change their tone, or the

public loses its trust in it. Flaks can cost media houses substantial losses if the people behind

them have considerable resources. Mainstream media should avoid bad publicity at all costs

because it will taint their credibility and integrity. Editorial teams should therefore ensure

gatekeeping is done without any form of bias. They should allow information on the set

standards and ethics without incorporating personal opinions.

Social media users post and share information in a decentralized manner.

Notwithstanding, there are people with a massive following who may influence or propagate

certain opinions centrally. They have many followers, hence a large audience that can easily be

influenced by what they post or share. There are focal structures in social media that may work

as units to propagate misinformation due to their collective influence. They may misinterpret or

manipulate information from mainstream media for their personal gains or influence people to

act against the mainstream media. Mainstream media often abides by gatekeeping regulations to

determine the information presented in the news, inclusive of fake news discourse. Their

communication flows vertically. Social media users, on the other hand, practice networked

gatekeeping, which is influenced by influencers. The gap in this study was that it ignored the fact

that consumers can be gatekeepers at the consumption level. They choose what to believe and

not to.

Another study by Haselmayer et al. found that the media covers political part messages

under the influence of political bias (2017). It showed how political parties manipulated media

coverage to their advantage. The media also played a role in presenting news in favor of political
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parties through gatekeeping. The study found that the media tends to allow information

pertaining to their audience's favorite political party to dominate the news. The reason behind

this bias in gatekeeping is to draw the attention of more readers. The more readers they get, the

higher their advertising rates go, resulting in more profits. The effect becomes more significant

when the messages have high news value (Haselmayer et al., 2017). the gatekeeping theory

contributes significantly to the media's role in political elections. During election periods, the

news mainly focuses on political parties and aspirants. Gatekeeping works in favor of political

parties with the most followers. They report more on the people's favorite candidates to expand

their audience. A larger audience guarantees them commercial gains mainly from advertising,

which is one of their primary sources of revenue.

The study found that media coverage of political campaign messages may favor some

politicians more than others. For instance, they may present messages that defame a particular

political actor while covering up for the shortcomings of their preferred candidate. They may

favor one political actor over the other for various reasons. There are supply-side factors,

including the gatekeepers' political preference and demand-driven factors such as the preference

of the readers. Supply-side factors may depict bias within media systems because they show their

support for one candidate over another. Demand-driven factors may influence news reporting if

media outlets realize that their audience support one political actor more than the other, hence

they will prefer to read more news about them. A gap in this study is that it did not consider

media owners’ influence on the bias practiced in gatekeeping during political campaigns.

Other researchers, Welbers & Opgenhaffen, investigated the impact of social media

editors, with the main focus being the newspapers’ public pages’ impact on Facebook (2018).

They found that newspapers’ Facebook pages significantly influence the diffusion of news on
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Facebook. The posts got varied engagements in social media compared to other media they were

posted on. In some cases, the media released some information after posting news after the

information became popular to arouse engagements. The timing and amount of information

released on the social media influenced the number of engagements those posts received. Social

media editors can release information at different times to achieve different objectives. The gap

in this study is that aggregate engagements cannot be used to quantify gatekeeping’s effect on

newspapers’ public Facebook pages.

In conclusion, recent literature on applying the gatekeeping theory of mass

communication shows how it is used in various social platforms. It can be used to verify the

news, whether it is fake or real. It can also be used in political campaigns to propagate personal

agendas. The theory can be used to manage social media pages for newspaper outlets. It should

be used professionally to ensure people are not misinformed.

References
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Al-Rawi, A. (2019). Gatekeeping fake news discourses on mainstream media versus social

media. Social Science Computer Review, 37(6), 687-704.

Haselmayer, M., Wagner, M., & Meyer, T. M. (2017). Partisan bias in message selection: Media

gatekeeping of party press releases. Political communication, 34(3), 367-384.

Steele, J. E. (2018). Censorship of library collections: An analysis using gatekeeping theory.

Collection Management, 43(4), 229-248.

Wallace, J. (2018). Modelling contemporary gatekeeping: The rise of individuals, algorithms and

platforms in digital news dissemination. Digital Journalism, 6(3), 274-293.

Welbers, K., & Opgenhaffen, M. (2018). Social media gatekeeping: An analysis of the

gatekeeping influence of newspapers’ public Facebook pages. New Media & Society,

20(12), 4728-4747.