Twitter, News Aggegators & Co : Journalistic Gatekeeping in the Age of Digital Media Culture

Abstract: With the advent of blogs, search engines, RSS and news feeds, the role of online journalists as those who shape everyone’s social reality has decreased. . Currently because of emerging digital tools and outlets, “amateurs” have the ability to not only assemble their own news stream, but they can also publish their own material to a wide audience in only seconds. Gatekeeping is a fundamental concept of media studies and has long been a tool to determine the power of journalists over society. However, digital media requires reconsidering gatekeeping in the traditional sense, as new gatekeepers, such as Twitter-users, “gatejumpers,” new forms of digital influencers, and content aggregators also have gatekeeping power. In my research, I will review and examine the relationship of traditional journalism pratices for gatekeeping in comparison to online journalists.