Review of Literature: Gatekeeping and Agenda Setting  Controlling a large portion of Digg’s front page material, power users act as gatekeepers to much of what appears on Digg’s front page; stories and websites that come into their possession can easily be promoted to the front page if they wish, or ignored if it does not meet their personal agenda. Such control resembles a modern day version of the gatekeeping theory, originally developed to analyze the control editors had over whether or not to publish journalistic material in the news media. Coined by psychologist Kurt Lewin (1947), gatekeeping was used to describe wives and mothers as the people responsible for deciding which food would end up on the family’s dinner table. Though initially meant for the social psychology discipline, David White took hold of Lewin’s comments, and in 1950 aimed it towards journalism and the role of editors in the news flow (Williams & Delli Carpini, 2000). In response, Lewin expanded the theory to include mediums of communication – particularly, a news item making its way through communication channels in an organization (1951). With this definition, four elements of gatekeeping theory were established, paving way for future research: Channel – the organization that determines the obstacles that an item must pass though. The news media are channels themselves; newspapers, television and radio news programs all consider what should become news. |
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