Review and Conclusions (cont'd)

Conclusions: Digg’s rebranding process was a failure in two main ways – the site lost a large contingent of its user base, and power users now dominate Digg’s front page more than ever, acting as a tightly run oligarchy of users. The new age gatekeepers of a new age medium, these users have the ability to influence what appears on Digg far more than any other users, and use this power to give the website a strong liberal slant, including an abundance of material favouring the Democratic agenda and liberation of marijuana usage.

Whereas traditional gatekeepers were found in television, newspaper and radio, the gatekeepers of this time are found online – where information arguably cannot be controlled, and is fully open. With this openness however, a new question arises – the availability of a seemingly endless amount of sources for stories/news online means we have a surplus of information available to us. With this overwhelming quantity of sources, is quality sacrificed? How are we to determine that one source is better than another?

Moving forward, it would be interesting to see if such gatekeeping trends are common amongst other online news aggregators – specifically Reddit.com, who overtook Digg in traffic rankings last August as the internet’s top news aggregation website. For now however, it is safe to say that in its current state, Digg has hit rock bottom. Receiving now only a fraction of the visitors it once received on a regular basis, the site has been commandeered by a group of users with a specific agenda. A clear example of the adage, “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it,” Digg attempted to fix what many thought was wrong with an excellent site, only to drive away its core users.

Is it possible to have a media landscape free of gatekeeping and agenda setting? In this instance, it appears not. Through its own attempts to curb gatekeepers and agenda setting, Digg ultimately dug its own grave.