Review of Literature: Gatekeeping and Agenda Setting (cont'd)

Spreading to communication studies, journalism, political science and sociology (Barzilai-Nahon, 2009), gatekeeping research would eventually influence the development of agenda setting theory, developed in the early 1970s by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw. By analyzing the influence that news media had on audiences, with regards to which stories were “newsworthy” and the subsequent space and prominence they were given (Brooks et al., 1992), agenda setting theory allowed McCombs and Shaw to determine that the importance audiences place on news items is proportionate to the emphasis that news media places on it (1972). The two found that through their daily selection of the news, editors focus an audience’s attention and perception of what the most important issues are of the day, and in turn are able to influence the salience of topics in the public agenda (McCombs, 2004).

Since gatekeeping and agenda setting entered mainstream communications research, news media has split into two distinct factions – the ‘traditional,’ composed of newspapers, television and radio, and the ‘new,’ consisting of websites, blogs, wikis, podcasts and more. Though still a strong influence on public discourse, traditional media’s ability to control or shape events has come into question with the rise of new media. As early as the Monica Lewinsky scandal of the late 1990s, researchers began to conclude that traditional gatekeepers were no longer able to bar individuals from the gatekeeping process, citing a national magazine’s attempt to block a story on the affair; the story itself was reported on by online blogs, in turn forcing traditional media (including the magazine) to follow suit (Williams & Delli Carpini, 2000). Similarly, before the development of Wikipedia in 2001, the gatekeepers of encyclopedia entries were commonly Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners; today, any individual with knowledge can use the wiki format to participate in the definition process (DiStaso, Messner and Stacks, 2007).