News Gatekeepers Research Articles

THE MAGA MOVEMENT’S BIG UMBRELLA*

This article considers the phenomenon of MAGAism as a general, “big-umbrella” social movement to probe its structure and persistence. Drawing on my research on nationalist movements, I discuss the narrative flexibility and emotional power of nationalism and consider how these characteristics fuel a particularly resentful form of majoritarian nationalism—MAGAism. I identify five points of entry for MAGA participation, starting with this bitter majoritarian nationalism, then populism, then traditional conservatism, next a Trumpian personality cult, and ending with the alt-right’s extreme white supremacism and fascism. I then discuss two forces that gather this unlikely collection of groups and individuals under the MAGA umbrella: (1) the flexibility of social identity and how it allows status-threat narratives to subsume and redirect economic and political claims; (2) the social media environment of the 2020s, cut loose from the traditional gatekeepers of news and information, wherein maximizing hits—not accuracy—is the guiding principle. On the one hand, social media intensify the prominence of the demagogic celebrity at the helm of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump. On the other hand, alt-right trolls compete for prominence by seeking outrageousness and shock value, enhanced by algorithms that create a closed information environment. These social media trends pull MAGA adherents further to the right by inflaming public discourse and building the movement on lies and conspiracies.

Effects of the news finds me perception on algorithmic news attitudes and social media political homophily

AbstractPrior literature on political filter bubbles suggests an overall positive association between social media use and political networks diversification. Sometimes, this might not be the case. This study argues that the News Finds Me perception (NFM) or the belief that “one” can be well-informed about public affairs without actively seeking information as news will find “me” through “my” networks, tend to nurture a positive attitude toward algorithmic news gatekeeping. Likewise, NFM’s news over-reliance on one’s social network support the development of homogeneous information and discussion political networks in social media (political homophily). Results based on a variety of ordinary least squares regression models (cross-sectional, lagged, and autoregressive) from a U.S. representative panel survey, as we all as autoregressive structural equation model tests, indicate that this is indeed the case. This study serves to specifically clarify when and how social media and the NFM facilitate politically homogeneous filter bubbles.

Impact of Personalized Recommendation on Today’s News Communication through Algorithmic Mechanism in the New Media Era

In recent years, the continuous innovation of technology has greatly contributed to the great changes in the media industry. The rapid development of big data and artificial intelligence technologies has enabled people to transition from the era of new media to the era of intelligent media. While the automation of news production brings broad prospects for intelligent media, it also accelerates the challenge of information explosion. Facing the massive amount of news and information, how to get the information users want quickly has become a big problem. In order to solve the audience’s information anxiety, personalized news recommendation system is born. In fact, news gate-keeping is an important part of news distribution. In the era of smart media, algorithmic distribution has impacted the original distribution mode and brought challenges to news gate-keeping. Personalized news recommendation is one of the gate-keeping methods of intelligent media. At the same time, with the rapid development of the Internet and information technology, today’s society has entered a period of information explosion. In terms of news, the rapid development of the Internet has made it easier to publish and read news on the Internet. As a result, online news has become an important way for people to get information. However, the previous news websites had a large amount of news information, but only collected and consolidated the news. As a result, users were left to passively receive news information from news sites and find the content they needed. Consequently, although the Internet has a huge amount of complicated news information, it is unable to meet the diversified and personalized news needs of users. In order to solve this issue, researchers are constantly looking for solutions. The emergence of recommendation system is an effective measure to cope with the above problem. The mainstream models of recommendation systems are collaborative filtering model and content-based recommendation model. However, there are two essential problems with collaborative filtering. The first one is the cold start problem, and the second one is that the preference matrix of item users becomes sparse as the number of items and users grows. These two issues can seriously affect the recommendation accuracy of the recommendation system. As a result, a hybrid recommendation system is built by fusing common recommendation algorithms. This system can not only deliver personalized information to different users, but also compensate the shortcomings of a single algorithm to a certain extent. To be specific, the newly constructed hybrid recommendation system can push news of interest to users according to their demographic attributes, behavioral attributes, and interests, thus expanding the scope of news communication.

Journalistic translation: A gate at which journalism studies and translation studies meet

This theoretical article focuses on a part-whole relationship between journalistic translation (or news translation) and the overall process of news gatekeeping within and outside of the boundaries of media organizations. The article argues for understanding the part (i.e., journalistic translation) in light of the whole (i.e., news gatekeeping) and the whole in light of the part. In this regard, it approaches journalistic translation in terms of its relationships with other news gatekeeping operations (e.g., information selection and editing) and factors that control the whole process of news gatekeeping (e.g., organizational and social constraints); besides, it touches on the relevance of the inclusion of the concept of translation in theorizing about news gatekeeping and the potential of the findings of research on translation in news production settings to contribute to news gatekeeping scholarship.

News Sharing, Gatekeeping, and Polarization: A Study of the #Bolsonaro Election

What explains news sharing in polarized social media environments? Will polarization of the audiences further polarize news organizations? In this article, we connect existing theories of news sharing and gatekeeping to describe the conditions under which social media polarization will increase polarization among news organizations. Our results show that a polarized readership will further polarize news organizations. However, polarization will be larger for organizations with lower reputations. To test our theory, we introduce readers to a statistical design that estimates news sharing behaviour from observational social media data. The model allows researchers to study the relationship between news sharing behaviour and gatekeeping in political communication.

The Voices of Public Opinion: Lingering Structures of Feeling about Women’s Suffrage in 1917 U.S. Newspaper Letters to the Editor

ABSTRACT Answering continued calls for a cultural approach to the study of women’s history, this article explores what social historian Raymond Williams referred to as lingering traces of “structures of feeling” about women’s suffrage in letters published in the U.S. commercial periodical press. Through a discourse analysis of 225 letters to the editor published in five prominent U.S. newspapers, alongside other relevant primary and secondary sources, this study offers insight into the production of letters to the editor as an act of strategic communication by suffragists and anti-suffragists, the regulation of letters to the editor by news gatekeepers and agenda-setters, and the consumption of letters to the editor by newspaper readers in 1917, a pivotal year in the decades-long cultural struggle over women’s suffrage. This article contends that these contested editorial spaces were important strategic sites where the negotiation of common-sense logics that continue to inform our present-day discourse unfolded.

The Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: How Russia’s Internet Research Agency Tweets Appeared in U.S. News as Vox Populi

The Russian-sponsored Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) use of social media to influence U.S. political discourse is undoubtedly troubling. However, scholarly attention has focused on social media, overlooking the role that news media within the country played in amplifying false, foreign messages. In this article, we examine articles in the U.S. news media system that quoted IRA tweets through the lens of changing journalism practices in the hybrid media system, focusing specifically on news gatekeepers’ use of tweets as vox populi. We find that a majority of the IRA tweets embedded in the news were vox populi. That is, IRA tweets were quoted (1) for their opinion, (2) as coming from everyday Twitter users, and (3) with a collection of other tweets holistically representing public sentiment. These findings raise concerns about how modern gatekeeping practices, transformed due to the hybrid media system, may also unintentionally let in unwanted disinformation from malicious actors.

News criteria on social media Comparing news media use of Facebook and Twitter

The supply of news is larger than ever. However, traditional mass media are no longer in a privileged position as the exclusive gatekeepers of news; they face competition from alternative media, organizations and citizens who can produce and distribute news instantly through websites, blogs and social media. Furthermore, a significant share of news consumption is now based on links and stories appearing in users’ social media newsfeed. Every week, 56 percent of Danish citizens get news through social media that have become a major battleground for attention, clicks, viewers and readers (Schrøder et al. 2018). If traditional media are to retain attention and audience they have to play by social media logics.This article identifies and compares news criteria of social media posts shared on 25 Danish Twitter accounts and 25 Danish Facebook pages, representing exactly the same 25 news media actors. Hereby I investigate the criteria by which media frame their stories shared through social media and compare different uses and strategies on Facebook and Twitter.

What kind of news gatekeepers do we want machines to be? Filter bubbles, fragmentation, and the normative dimensions of algorithmic recommendations

Machines are increasingly aiding or replacing humans in journalistic work, primarily in news distribution. We examined whether news recommendation engines contribute to filter bubbles and fragmented news audiences by asking a diverse set of real-world participants (N = 168), using their personal Google accounts, to search Google News for news about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and report the first five stories they were recommended on each candidate. Users with different political leanings from different states were recommended very similar news, challenging the assumption that algorithms necessarily encourage echo chambers. Yet we also found a very high degree of homogeneity and concentration in the news recommendations. On average, the most recommended five news organizations comprised 69% of all recommendations. Five news organizations alone accounted for 49% of the total number of recommendations collected. Out of 14 organizations that dominated recommendations across the different searches, only three were born-digital, indicating that the news agenda constructed on Google News replicates traditional industry structures more than disrupts them. We use these findings to explore the challenges of studying machine behavior in news from a normative perspective, given the lack of agreed-upon normative standards for humans as news gatekeepers. This article suggests that because there is no one agreed-upon standard for humans as news gatekeepers, assessing the performance of machines in that role is doubly complicated.

Impact of power and ideology on news translation in Korea: a quantitative analysis of foreign news gatekeeping

ABSTRACTNews translation is a social practice and as such is bound by social factors including power and ideology, both of which are closely linked with the manipulation and distortion of news. This begs the question: what happens when in-house journalists translate foreign news on sensitive issues with the potential to impact their organization? This study is an attempt to demonstrate how power and ideology can affect the process and products of news translation through a quantitative analysis of gatekeeping and translation of foreign news in South Korea. It briefly examines the unique history and landscape of South Korea’s news institutions and compares the differences between South Korea’s private newspapers and Yonhap News Agency, a de-facto state news agency in an unequal power relationship with the government, in the selection of New York Times articles (source texts) regarding the Korean government/leader, as well as in the selection of translated articles (target texts) for republication. The study found Yonhap to be less likely to select source texts that take a negative stance toward the government, and that there is a correlation between source-text stance and target-text selection, suggesting that power is indeed an important factor in news translation in South Korea.

Fashion and Communication Training for A Quality Information

Our research group Media Studio for quality journalism by the excellence project “Quality Journalism to new digital journalistic formats” has rescued a tool to measure the quality of the contents and to analyze treatment of specialized contents. The overall project objective is to find out what are the parameters that determine how journalistic work can be considered of quality. Furthermore, it will be necessary to establish the relationship between journalistic quality and profile of the profession and if that quality should be or not linked to the professional figure. We consider that the method value added journalistic developed at the Catholic University of Chile and Argentina is a real find for an objective assessment of quality journalism. This methodology evaluates the newspaper articles, focusing on two stages: the selection of the news (Gatekeeping) and the process of creating it (News making), based on the application analysis sheet. The second stage of the project will be to study the formation of specialized journalists in different national and international universities. The method assigned to each research is the analysis of content and interviews with specialized sources, respectively. After making both investigations we will notice if it exists an equivalence relation between quantity and quality of published information on fashion at the national and international media and the professional profile that configures the information. The comparative analysis shows on the one hand that quantity does not equal quality of information. Moreover, it is important to see what is the relationship between the training provided by prestigious universities and the quality of the articles published on the media. Is now a reality the media need to have specialized fashion journalists because is increasing the fashion information. Until now, it was limited to magazines and special supplements with a high level of technical language.

Tweeting Conventions

This study explores the use of Twitter by political reporters and commentators—an understudied population within the rapidly growing literature on digital journalism—covering the 2012 Republican and Democratic conventions. In particular, we want to know if and how the “affordances” of Twitter are shaping the traditional norms and routines of US campaign reporting surrounding objectivity, transparency, gatekeeping, and horse race coverage, and whether Twitter is bursting the “bubble” of insider talk among reporters and the campaigns they cover. A sample derived from all tweets by over 400 political journalists reveals a significant amount of opinion expression in reporters' tweets, but little use of Twitter in ways that improve transparency or disrupt journalists' (and campaigns') role as gatekeepers of campaign news. Overall, particularly when looking at what political journalists retweet and what they link to via Twitter, the campaign “bubble” seems at the moment to have remained largely intact.

Changing Paradigms of Media Landscape in the Digital Age

Digital technologies have fundamentally altered the nature and function of media in our society, reinventing ageold practices of public communication and at times circumventing traditional media and challenging its privileged role as gatekeepers of news and entertainment. We know the world is changing. And we believe research needs to change too. This article discusses how new media landscape has irrevocably altered how people interact with each other, how communities are formed, how opinions are shared. This landscape is technology-led and technologyenabled, and has occasioned key shifts in the way consumers think about the world around them and about brands. The article aims to explore and understand the impact of digital technology on our traditional media and find out how these technologies are enabling media professionals around the world in their respective areas. The focus is also on the usage of digital technology in mass media and its impacts on our society and the future of new technology.

Readers as gatekeepers of online news: Brazil, China, and the United States

The popularity of online news items is calculated by news sites as a function of reader behaviors, such as clicking on or reading articles, emailing them to others, commenting on or discussing them, and even linking to them in blogs. Online news sites often provide rank-ordered lists of popular articles that are updated throughout the day. Popularity reflects not only the interest of individuals, but it also can represent communication from an individual reader to other people. In the case of emailed articles, recipients may be friends, family or colleagues. When readers add comments below an article, they may reach anyone on the internet. When readers communicate with other readers, they extend the usual gatekeeping process but their selections may not reflect the news values of the journalists who put the sites together. This study compares the news values of readers in Brazil, China and the United States.

Media in the digital age

Digital technologies have fundamentally altered the nature and function of media in our society, reinventing age-old practices of public communication and at times circumventing traditional media and challenging its privileged role as gatekeepers of news and entertainment. Some critics believe these technologies keep the public involved in an informed discourse on matters of public importance, but it isn't clear this is happening on a large scale. Propaganda disguised as news is flourishing, and though interaction with the digital domain teaches children valuable skills, it can also expose them to grave risks.John V. Pavlik critically examines our current digital innovations& mdash;blogs, podcasting, peer-to-peer file sharing, on-demand entertainment, and the digitization of television, radio, and satellites& mdash;and their positive and negative implications. He focuses on present developments, but he also peers into the future, foreseeing a media landscape dominated by a highly fragmented, though active audience, intense media competition, and scarce advertising dollars. By embracing new technologies, however, Pavlik shows how professional journalism and media can hold on to their role as a vital information lifeline and continue to operate as the tool of a successful democracy.

Public information officers: A descriptive study of crime news gatekeepers

Criminal justice public information officers have emerged as a new criminal justice specialty and key gatekeepers in the flow of crime and justice information to news agencies and the public. Despite their gatekeeping role, they have not been examined regarding their specific attitudes, backgrounds, training, or tasks. As an initial step in addressing this deficiency, the results of a survey of Florida public information officers are reported. Public information officers divide into two groups of civilian and sworn officers. Sworn public information officers tend to be males who have educational backgrounds in criminal justice and little or no media-related experience prior to becoming public information officers. Civilian public information officers tend to be females who have educational backgrounds in communications and often have prior media-related experience. Irrespective of these differences, both groups agree about their daily tasks and the skills needed to perform their tasks and on an additional number of attitudes concerning their work. One of the more important differences between sworn and civilian public information officers is in the greater job satisfaction that civilian public information officers hold (despite being generally paid less) when compared with their sworn officer counterparts. Exploration of the difference in job satisfaction reveals that it is associated more with perceptions of a positive relationship with the media, the impact the public information officer feels he or she has in the agency, and their level of education than with either civilian or sworn status. Lastly, the overall results suggest a number of research hypotheses to pursue. Both theoretically and pragmatically of interest is whether a sworn/civilian structural division in the profession results in differences in the gatekeeping function of public information officers. The crucial issue concerns the generation of crime and justice news and whether sworn and civilian public information officers select different crimes or package the same crime differently for news dissemination and public consumption.

Consonance in depiction of violent material in television news

“Consonance” is the tendency for journalists to exhibit uniformity or similarity in reporting. Television news gatekeepers viewed six versions of a story, ranging from one with no violent video to a very violent version. Each chose a version representing his/her perception of an “acceptable” level of violence for broadcast. Most considered the shooting and the victim falling to the floor acceptable, but excluded images of the dead body. This was consistent (consonant) regardless of market size or preference for “neutral” versus “participant” journalism. However, gatekeepers who labeled themselves “objective” cleared a more violent version for air than self‐labeled “interpretive” journalists.

Community Structure and Editor Opinions about Planning

This research focuses on the role of editors as community news gatekeepers. It surveys more than 150 editors from Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota, and Wisconsin, comparing findings for two time periods, 1965 and 1985. The 1985 period was characterized by increased planning, especially in large, complex communities. This study finds that nearly all surveyed editors, as community elites, favored community planning, but by 1985 saw this planning as an aspect of community growth more than an instrument of community control. Yet editors from complex, pluralistic communities did tend to see planning as part of maintaining community social order and control more than did editors from smaller communities.

Yonhap News Agency: Gatekeeper of International News in Korea

Nowadays most international news comes from the Big Four agencies: Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), Reuters, and Agence France Presse (AFP). These world news agencies not only collect news from most countries and territories of the world, they also distribute the news to most of the world's countries and territories.1 They are the paramount sources of world news. However, once the news departs from the world news agencies, it is at the disposal of other gatekeepers. Even though most of these gatekeepers do not have an ability to cover the news, and so cannot add to the amount of raw news, they can exert a gatekeeping power by their selective percep tion of world news. By controlling the size of their news hole, by controlling the news selection and by many other means, these gatekeepers can control the flow of foreign news. If their gatekeeping is effective and strong, the whole picture of the world news flow can be transformed, causing at least a partial diminution in the influence of the world news agencies. Among these many foreign news gatekeepers, the national news agencies, which are the coupled systems between the world news agencies and the domestic news media, have an extremely important role in the world news flow.2

Foreign News Gatekeepers and Criteria of Newsworthiness

Foreign News Gatekeepers and Criteria of Newsworthiness