Mass Communication Listening Test 5

Front Groups Transcript

TRANSCRIPT: Hello! Today’s lecture is on mass communication, and in particular I will be focusing on ‘gatekeeping theory’.  So, I shall begin by providing you with a definition, and this will be followed by some brief background information on how the theory was created. I’ll then focus on the five key factors associated with gate-keeping, and then discuss the principles of journalism. Finally I’ll look at contemporary gate-keeping in social media. 

Ok, let’s begin. So what is gatekeeping theory? According to Russell (2019), gatekeeping theory refers to the control of information as it passes through a gate. This metaphorical gate is guarded by gatekeepers who make decisions about what information to let through and what to keep out. In making these decisions, gatekeepers exercise power over those on the other side of the gate. Put simply, gatekeeping is the process of selecting, and then filtering, items of media to be presented to an audience. This means gatekeeping falls into a role of surveillance and monitoring data. Now, I must emphasise here that gate-keeping is NOT censorship. Gate-keeping is about maintaining the quality of the content and its relevancy whereas censorship is the removal of discussions about what the controller sees as disagreeable topics.

Right, let’s look at the background of gatekeeping. The term gatekeeping was first coined by Kurt Lewin, a German psychologist, in 1943. In his paper; ‘Forces behind food habits and methods of change’, Lewin used an example of a housewife to illustrate how an individual determines which meals are served at the dinner table. He noticed that food goes through a number of decision making processes before it reaches the dinner table. It includes planning, buying, preparing and cooking. It was concluded that not all family members have an equal weight in making household food decisions and it was the wife who typically controls the gate; meaning what will be eaten that day. The key point here is that Lewin identified that the wife was the gate-keeper and had a significant amount of control over the other family members.

Following on from this study, in 1950, David Manning White, a journalist professor from Boston University, looked at the factors an editor takes into consideration when deciding what news to publish. White studied Mr Gates an editor of a newspaper with a circulation of 30,000. White found that the editor chooses articles on a number of decisions. Firstly, worthiness of the story. Secondly, importance for the audience, and thirdly, the political attitudes of Mr Gates. The research concluded that editorial decisions are highly subjective and based on the editor’s own set of beliefs, experiences, attitudes and expectations.

Since the 1950’s, a wide range of research has been carried out to evaluate the factors in which the gatekeepers operate. A recent journal article by Shoemaker and Vos in 2009 led to the identification of five key factors associated in the gate-keeping process. The first factor is ‘Individual’. This is the journalist who reports on the news and has the most influence over the news article. The second is ‘routine’. The themes shown in the news and other media is always in a pattern, meaning that media organisations have schedules to follow and have an allocated time for each category. The third is ‘organisation’. Media organisations have their own views, agendas and propaganda. They also have to follow certain rules and ethics. It is important to note here that all news or other media products have elements of the organisation’s own opinions, views and bias. The fourth factor is ‘Extra-Media’. Most media organisations are governed by related people and institutions who have a say in what is published like sponsors, advertisers, government, etc. This is a really important point because it suggests that media companies are highly influenced by the financial supporters. This generally means that negative news associated to these related companies will not pass through the gate for publication. The final factor is ‘Ideology’. Societal ideologies must be followed by the media as it influences what is reported. The norms and values of people must be respected by the media.

In addition to the gate-keeping factors, it is also necessary to take into account the five criteria that journalists rely on when choosing a news story as this correlates to gatekeeping principles. The first criterion is ‘strong impact’. Local stories impact the public more than unfamiliar international events. In order to attract attention, journalists inflate news and present them as situations that could happen to anyone. The second criterion is a captivating topic like violence, conflict, disaster, or scandal. It is unfortunately true that newspapers that contain violence outsell other newspaper chains that contain less violence by 5:1. The third criterion is familiarity. News stories gain more attention if they have issues pertaining to the public or if they include familiar situations concerning a large audience. An example would be news about a well-known celebrity who has just got divorced. Proximity is the fourth criterion. People prefer news that is close in proximity. They tend to pay more attention to local news than international or national affairs. The fifth criterion is timeliness and novelty. News should be something interesting that does not occur every day or an event that is not a part of people’s lives. Events such as hurricanes or new store openings tend to capture the attention of many.

Ok, so we’ve looked at how gate-keeping is used and applied but how relevant is gate-keeping now in the 21^st century? Social media has exploded with 1,000s of blogs, articles and posts all detailing personal interpretations of news and stories connected to the world. In this new digital era of social media anyone can be a reporter, so one of the questions is whether the role of the gatekeeper in traditional media is diminishing. The answer is, in fact, NO. Groshek and Tandoc (2016) emphasise that gate-keeping is needed more now than ever before because of the rise in clickbait, fake news and misinformation. The researchers claim that people seek honest, reliable news that is based on fact not opinion. Although trust in the media is at an all-time low of 44% according to The Guardian, there is still a need for news that is credible and presented in a professional manner without too much distortion of the truth. As a result, media organisations have now gained a considerable online presence through social media and as a consequence the role of gate-keeping has evolved into what Shoemaker and Vos call audience gatekeeping. According to the writers, audience gatekeeping is the process in which users share news items and comment on them based on their own set of criteria. This change has in turn created an empowering role of the ordinary online user in retelling and redistributing news agendas.

Ok, so that brings me to the final part of the lecture today. We’ve discussed what gate-keeping is, the theory’s research, the key factors to newsworthiness and looked at gate-keeping in contemporary society.  Obviously, gate-keeping is a controlling process and is influenced through many areas within the media organisation. The question I’d like to pose to you today is to what extent can we really trust the media to provide us with unbiased, truthful, honest news that is not subjective to opinion, political and financial incentives.

Thank you.

Written by C. Wilson (2023) / Spoken by F. Shirani

Reference list

Burnes, B. (2020). The Origins of Lewin’s Three-Step Model of Change. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 56(1), 32-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886319892685

Groshek, J., & Tandoc, E.C. (2016). The affordance effect: gatekeeping and (non)reciprocal journalism on Twitter. Proceedings of the 7th 2016 International Conference on Social Media & Society.

Russell, M (2019) Theorizing Journalism’s Institutional Relationships: An Elaboration of Gatekeeping Theory, Journalism Studies, 20:16, 2331-2348, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2019.1593882

Shoemaker, P.J., & Vos, T. (2009). Gatekeeping theory (1st ed.). Routledge. Cambridge.

White, D. M. (1950). The “Gate Keeper”: A Case Study in the Selection of News. Journalism Quarterly, 27(4), 383-390. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769905002700403

World Economic Forum (2021) Gate keeping principles [online]. Available from https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Gatekeepers_A_Unifying_Framework_2021.pdf (viewed 20.12.20)