Gatekeeping in Transition

Abstract

Right from the start, journalists recognizedmany with considerable alarmthat digital media would change the nature of gatekeeping profoundly and permanently.What, they wondered, would civic society do without them?Journalists have long seen themselves as central to the democratic process.The provision of information that citizens need to be free and self-governing (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007), along with the vetting of potentially harmful misinformation or disinformation, is foundational to their self-perception as the linchpin of citizen sovereignty.In what Gans (2003) calls the journalist's view of democracy, this occupational role as gatekeeper is vital to a properly informed electorate.Normative journalistic behavior involves ethically exercising this gatekeeping control over news content on the public's behalf (Lewis, 2012a).This civic responsibility is most clearly delineated in coverage of politics and government.Yet it is obvious to everyone, including journalists, that the steadily and rapidly increasing prominence of the Internet as a key vehicle for both obtaining and providing political information undercuts their role as the gatekeepers to democracy.Indeed, no sooner had news outlets ventured online in the mid-1990s than observers began highlighting the challenges stemming from its potential to displace journalists as providers and analysts of

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