Abstract
In the digital content industry, the emerging multi-channel networks (MCNs) have dramatically changed the ways of content production and distribution in sustainable social media. As a result, it also brings an unprecedented impact and challenge to the traditional gatekeeping model, which play a vital role to describe and explain the reporting process regarding news events. In this paper, we propose a Ternary Interactive Gatekeeping (TIG) model and then discusse the gatekeeping behaviors of MCNs from the aspects of content production and distribution, which intend to integrate the roles of MCNs, content creators and social platforms all in one. In this way, MCNs are not only the intermediary, but also undertake the responsibility of gatekeeper in social media, which exerts the important role in online pseudo-environments. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with 15 interviewees that consist of the advertiser, creator, and staff in MCNs and platforms. For the content production, the gatekeeping behaviors of MCNs consist of selection, shaping and withholding. Those contents that satisfy the profits and development requirements of MCNs are chosen. For the content distribution, the gatekeeping behaviors of MCNs consist of display, timing and repetition, which aim to realize the high media exposure for Internet users. It can be seen that MCNs’ gatekeeping behaviors are affected by the business-logic. By the proposed gatekeeping scheme, we intend to provide a new perspective for future research on information management of social media.
Highlights
Since 2005, multi-channel networks (MCNs) have been emerging as an independent institution affiliated with social platforms (e.g., YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).Depending on the huge amount of third-party providers, MCNs can offer services of audience development, content programming, creator collaborations, digital rights management, monetization, and sales [1,2]
In order to overcome the shortcomings of the existing gatekeeping model and reduce the societal risks raised by the traceability of individual and collective behaviors, in this work, we investigate behaviors of MCNs participating in the gatekeeping process and propose an adaptive gatekeeping model to describe its gatekeeping actions
We have proposed the Ternary Interactive Gatekeeping (TIG) Model, which can be regarded as the supplement and amendment for the existing gatekeeping models
Summary
Since 2005, multi-channel networks (MCNs) have been emerging as an independent institution affiliated with social platforms (e.g., YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Depending on the huge amount of third-party providers, MCNs can offer services of audience development, content programming, creator collaborations, digital rights management, monetization, and sales [1,2]. MCNs market is worth US$ 2943.0 million in 2018 and is expected to reach approximately. In China, the number of MCN agencies have exceeded more than twenty thousand in 2019, which increase 12.5 times compared to that in 2015 [4]. The market size increases from US$ 123.1 Mn (in 2015). As an intermediaries between social platforms, advertisers and content creators [6], MCNs have significantly affected the ecology of social media [6,7,8]
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