Gatekeeping

GATEKEEPING IS THE process by which world events get reduced to stories that appear in the newspaper, on television, in radio news broadcasts, and online. If communication can be characterized as a flow, the gatekeeper is the person who controls the floodgates, reducing the gushing tides of global information to little cups of water that come out of the media tap. In the context of a highly competitive and fast-paced election campaign, in which actors wish to promote particular ideas and ideals, regulation and control of the flow of information is of critical importance.

The originator of the term was Kurt Lewin, who first used it in 1947. The concept was later developed in David White's 1950 article, “The ‘Gatekeeper’: A Case Study in the Selection of News.” White observed that news selection in a typical newspaper involved a range of players, from reporters in the field, to the ranks of editors. He asked one editor to record a week's decision-making, stating what he included and excluded, and why. He called his editor, “Mr. Gates.” Mr. Gates rejected 90 percent of what came to him. His grounds for acceptance were based upon the commonsense perceptions of an experienced news professional, rejecting what had already been said, what was dull, and what was too extreme. In 1956, Walter Gieber expanded White's project. Gieber added to his list of gatekeepers persons other than newspaper professionals, notably key news informants (producers of the story) and the audience (consumers of the story). Gieber discovered that the decisions of newspaper professionals were driven both by the commercial and bureaucratic needs of the newspaper, and by their propensity to echo the voices of powerful entities in the economy, state, and society.

The concept of gatekeeping is less active in media analysis today than it was in the 1950s and 1960s. Many scholars regard it as crude, because it places the emphasis on blunt negation and sheer prevention rather than on targeted promotion. However, the concept of the [Page 271]gatekeeper retains its importance because it identifies the important factor of selectivity. In political life, what gets included and what remains excluded from dialogue in the public domain is a matter of vital importance. The power to gatekeep is the capacity to shape the cognitive maps of audiences and their ways of seeing the world. Silences and absences matter; what remains unspoken or unrecognized is as critical as what is spoken and recognized.

In the contemporary media environment, with its proliferation of media, channels, and genres, controlling the flow of information has become increasingly challenging. The economic requirements of audience share and the associated constraints of information and communications technologies shape the nature of what comes to public attention, as much as the judgments of news professionals and the elite/expert sources that supply them with information. The requirements of infotainment, celebrity, and scandal are increasingly accorded a role in determining what is news. For increasing numbers of young citizens, political gatekeepers now include the satirical celebrity anchors of late night comedy shows. Given the importance of access to information for the flourishing of deliberative democracy, the proliferation of sources can be seen as a positive development. However, the process of gatekeeping is about more than merely what gets through and what is rejected. Those who control the flow also privilege and promote certain details or angles of a story. Thus, gate-keeping can also be regarded as a preliminary form of agenda setting and issue framing.

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