Entry
Entries A-Z
Gatekeepers
Individuals at institutions who make the decisions to present or deny information from audiences. Gatekeepers decide how and what information is covered. These actions relate to the construction of media frames. Critics assert that this mode of authority is a type of censorship. This term particularly applies to individuals working in news organizations, ranging from journalists to reporters. The psychologist Kurt Lewin initiated the term in his 1947 work “Frontiers in Group Dynamics,” applying it to the function of the news media. McCombs and Shaw connected gatekeeping to agenda setting, a powerful theory introduced in their 1976 work “Structuring the Unseen Environment.”