Gatekeeping for Survival: Evidence from Online News Portals in Ghana

doi:10.7176/nmmc/99-02

Abstract

Media competitiveness and survival remain a huge responsibility in the digital era which is dictated by technological advancement, with its attendant content creators who publish what they deem as newsworthy. One approach to survival as identified in strategic media management literature is branding, which is portrayed by drawing a balance between journalistic and commercial orientations. Using the Media, Brands, Actors and Communication (MBAC) model and semi-structured interviews with online news editors, social media managers and social media curators of three solely online digital media brands in Ghana, this paper argues that the branding strategy and orientation of solely online news media portals in Ghana is more of commercial than journalistic as perceived in their type of gatekeeping. This is attributed to the need to remain competitive, sustain their small businesses and to survive. The study concludes that to remain relevant and sustainable, solely online news portals need to consider mergers as an option. Keywords: brand identity; branding strategy; gatekeeping; Ghana; online news portals; survival DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/99-02 Publication date: October 31 st 2021

Highlights

The emergence of digital media opened up the gatekeeping function to everybody, resulting in a multiplicity of news streams (Bullard 2013, 3; Welbers & Opgenhaffen 2018, 4731; Shoemaker &Vos 2009)
Has this improved their survival potential, but has served as an opportunity to remain relevant to the different audience segments presented by the digital era (Aboagye Da-Costa, Ganaa & Apeakoran 2021). This notwithstanding, some news organisations were born with the digital era because their formats are purely online without any traditional media affiliation. The survival of such purely online and digital news brands, especially in Ghana becomes a challenge because the media space is populated, highly competitive and they extensively depend on their online and social media presence as well as the engaging content they publish, which is a product of the kind of gatekeeping they engage in
Since interpretive research renders itself useful in using issues, language and research approaches that empower the participants, recognizes the silenced voices, honour their individual differences and position the researcher and participants’ views in a historical, personal or political context (Deem 2002), semi-structured interviews were used as data collection tools from the online news editors, social media managers and social media curators of three purposively sampled online news media outlets that are hosted in Ghana

Summary

Introduction

The emergence of digital media opened up the gatekeeping function to everybody, resulting in a multiplicity of news streams (Bullard 2013, 3; Welbers & Opgenhaffen 2018, 4731; Shoemaker &Vos 2009). To alleviate the negative impact of digitization on their operations, most traditional news organisations have extended their operations by building online and digital brand extensions of their traditional media forms Has this improved their survival potential, but has served as an opportunity to remain relevant to the different audience segments presented by the digital era (Aboagye Da-Costa, Ganaa & Apeakoran 2021). This notwithstanding, some news organisations were born with the digital era because their formats are purely online without any traditional media affiliation. The balance drawn between these two objectives and the direction of emphasis often determine the branding orientation of the media outlet

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