Digital Journalism

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Digital Gatekeeping
News media versus social media

Peter Bro & Filip Wallberg

To cite this article: Peter Bro & Filip Wallberg (2014) Digital Gatekeeping, Digital Journalism, 2:3,
446-454, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2014.895507

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 DIGITAL GATEKEEPING
News media versus social media

Peter Bro and Filip Wallberg

This paper describes what has happened to the principles and practices of gatekeeping as
digital technologies have spread inside and outside newsrooms; and it has a particular focus
on news values among a new generation of gatekeepers who use social media to produce,
publish and distribute news stories. The article builds theoretically on the concepts of
gatekeeping and news values, and it is based empirically on a year-long study of the news
processes related to the use of Facebook. Data material includes an analysis of how more
than 200,000 news stories—that were published on the websites of major news organizations
in Denmark from June 2011 to June 2012—were shared, recommended and commented upon
in different social contexts. The article concludes by discussing some of the prevailing news
values in the news media and the social media.

KEYWORDS gatekeeping; news values; social media; technology

Introduction
“I have a few prejudices, built-in or otherwise, and there is little I can do about
them”, explained the anonymous wire editor in David Manning White’s (1950, 390) sem-
inal article “The ‘Gate Keeper’: A Case Study in the Selection of News”. White’s article
was the first to introduce the concept of gatekeeping within journalism studies—based
on “a germinal suggestion from an important study” by the sociologist Kurt Lewin, as
White (1964, 160) later explained—and it soon caught on. Ever since its first publica-
tion, hundreds of gatekeeper studies have followed. Today, the concept has even tran-
scended the sciences and become a household name among both news reporters and
news audiences.
The wire editor, who was dubbed Mr. Gates, was in White’s (1950 mind, the
“last” (384) and the “terminal” gate (390) in the complex process of communication
from the production of news to the consumption of news. But over the course of half
a century, new types of communicative infrastructures have substituted the electromag-
netic telegraphy on which the wire services were originally based. The result is a still
more complex process of communication where people employed in the news media
can no longer be considered the “last” or “terminal” gate.
People increasingly receive their news stories by way of friends, family and other
members of the former audience of which they themselves are a part. All of which has
been made possible by the rise and reach of social media, which have come to

Digital Journalism, 2014

Vol. 2, No. 3, 446–454, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.895507
Ó 2014 Taylor & Francis
 DIGITAL GATEKEEPING 447

challenge editorial decisions about what to select and reject as news stories. This article
describes the function and effect of this new generation of gatekeepers and discusses
the influence of various forces—or “factors” as Kurt Lewin (1947, 145) originally
described them—that are affecting decisions among the new gatekeepers about which
type of news stories they should hinder or help distribute.

The Concept of Gatekeeping and News Values

In his original study, White was particularly concerned about the function of the
gatekeeper and the influencing factors of what news items were included and excluded
in the process. This led him to follow a wire editor from a regional newspaper, with
whom—White later admitted (Reese and Ballinger 2001)—he had a relationship. Which,
incidentally, might have aided the wire editor’s generosity in terms of the time he
spent writing down the background for his “choices” and “discards” (White 1950, 383).
White concluded his study by asking the wire editor, Mr. Gates, a series of question
about the factors that influenced his decisions.
“I dislike Truman’s economics, daylight saving time and warm beer”, Mr. Gates
explained about his prejudices, and included among them a distinct dislike for “a pub-
licity seeking minority with headquarters in Rome” and a preference for “human inter-
est stories”, “stories well-wrapped up” and “tailored to suit our needs (or ones slanted
to conform to our editorial policies” (White 1950, 390). This led White to conclude that
his studies showed “how highly subjective, how based on the ‘gate keeper’s’ own set
of experiences, attitudes and expectations the communication of ‘news’ really is” (390).
This conclusion has since been disputed by a number of later studies, some of
which have become classics within the field of journalism studies in their own right.
Walter Gieber based his study of the gatekeeping process in the news media on 16
wire editors to overcome the critique of White’s dependency on the actions and atti-
tudes of a singular wire editor. In “News is What Newspapermen Make it”, Geiber (1964,
175) wrote that the gatekeepers are “preoccupied with the mechanical pressures” and
caught up in a “straitcoat” in media organizations. This dependency on factors outside
the head and hands of a wire editor has been echoed in other studies.
In another classic study from the 1950s, “Social Control in the Newsroom”,
Warren Breed (1955) described a process of “newsroom socialization”, where the pub-
lishers—in the words of Barbie Zelizer (2004, 53)—“set policy and the reporters fol-
lowed it”. This interest in the factors that influence the flow of news became
particularly salient with another seminar article, “The Structure of Foreign News”, where
Galtung and Ruge (1965) looked into the news values that could help explain what was
selected and rejected. Rather than looking at input, individual sub-professions and col-
lective processes in newsrooms, they looked at the actual output.
Their research led them to conclude that events “become news to the extent
that they satisfy” particular conditions (Galtung and Ruge 1965, 70), and they found
that 12 partly inter-twined news values could explain what events made the headlines
in four Norwegian newspapers. These values—or criteria—were: “Frequency, threshold,
unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness, continuity, composition,
reference to elite nations, reference to elite people, reference to persons and reference
to something negative” (70–71).
448 PETER BRO AND FILIP WALLBERG

The notion of news values has become a concept that can rival gatekeeping in
terms of its popularity among both researchers and news reporters, and numerous
other studies have since discussed the findings of the Norwegian study and suggested
other answers to what is considered newsworthy among news reporters in general, par-
ticular areas within news reporting and particular platforms for news reporting. Even if
some later researchers, such as Harcup and O’Neill, have been right in pointing out that
these news values are notoriously difficult to determine, since they are seldom “written
down or codified by news organizations” (Harcup and O’Neill 2010, 261).

From Conception to Consumption of News

The importance of these classic studies about gatekeepers and news values
appears in telling ways. Both studies have been reprinted a number of times, the arti-
cles are often referred to in the work of later generations of researchers, they frequently
appear in course materials at journalism schools around the world, and both concepts
have become household names among not only researchers, but also news reporters
themselves and at times even their news audiences. But much has happened with
news work as a result of new technological advances that prompt us to rethink the
function of and influencing factors on gatekeepers.
White, Geiber, Galtung and Ruge all took the work of the wire services as their
point of departure, but with the invention and implementation of new technologies
throughout the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century, new
means, methods and tools for the production, publication and distribution of news
have proliferated in and outside newsrooms. In light of these changes, the electromag-
netic telegraphy on which the wire services were originally based has become known
as the Victorian Internet (Standage 1998), and even though some newspapers and
some news practices still take their names after the telegraphy, it is now an extinct
technology.
These days, much of the work of news reporters and news media is based on
the rise and reach of the—digitally rather than electromagnetically based—internet of
the twenty-first century. This has also affected journalism (see e.g. Bruns 2005; Singer
et al. 2011; Shoemaker and Vos 2009), and the development prompts us to rethink
who function as gatekeepers today and which news values they base their work upon.
White, Geiber, Galtung and Ruge were in this context particularly interested in the func-
tion of what they termed the “last”, “final” and “terminal” gatekeepers. These were wire
editors whose decision had a direct impact on what was published in the newspapers
the next morning when the papers reached their readers.
At the time when both studies were carried out, it made sense to describe a
wire editor as the last gatekeeper in a process ranging from conception to consump-
tion of news. But in time, new “steps in the chain from event to reader” (1965, 71)—to
paraphrase Galtung and Ruge—have emerged. For still more people, the last gate-
keeper is not a professional news reporter employed in a newsroom who adheres to
particular news values or “ground rules”—as Harcup and O’Neill (2010, 261) have
described them—about what constitute news. Instead, the last gatekeeper has increas-
ingly become a friend, a member of the family or someone else with whom they are
familiar in their private and professional life (see e.g. Kleis Nielsen and Schrøder 2013);
 DIGITAL GATEKEEPING 449

and this new generation of gatekeepers might have their own conceptions about what
news to value, and what they should pass along in their own social network. A type of
distribution that is made still easier by the advent of new technologies, in general, and
new types of socially oriented media, in particular.

Shared, Recommended and Commented Upon

In order to describe and discuss the importance of this new generation of gate-
keepers, this study builds on the findings of an ongoing research project termed “I
Like”. As a part of this research project, researchers and journalism teachers have moni-
tored—and continue to do so—how news stories from the main news organizations in
Denmark (including news media originally based on print, radio and TV) have been
shared, commented and recommended on Facebook from 1 June 2011 to 1 June 2012.
The data material from this period consist of a total of 619,000 news stories, but in the
following we will focus on the seven major news organizations in Denmark, which lim-
its the study to 259,654 stories.
This sample of news organizations includes the five largest newspapers in
Denmark in terms of circulation: the three morning papers, Berlingske Tidende, Politiken
and Jyllands-Posten, and the two tabloid papers, BT and Ekstra Bladet. Finally, the two
major Danish television stations, DR and TV2, are included. On average, each news story
from these seven organizations was shared 9 times, recommended (“Liked”) 10 times
and commented upon 11 times, but the new gatekeepers, who base their work on the
social media, are highly selective in terms of the news stories they select and reject.
Table 1 shows the number of various types of social interaction in relation to the over-
all output of news, and on average 41 per cent of the news from these organizations
was never shared, recommended or commented upon.
Table 1 illustrates important differences between the seven news organizations.
In general, the tabloid papers, BT and Ekstra Bladet, had the highest output of
news, while the two TV stations, TV2 and DR, had some of the lowest output. However,
while two-thirds of TV2’s news stories were never shared, recommended or commented

TABLE 1
Social interaction with news output from major news organizations in Denmark, June
2011 to June 2012

News stories with no social

interaction
News
Media stories N %

Berlingske 35,608 17,515 49.19

BT 41,811 16,257 38.88
DR 24,658 4420 17.93
Ekstra Bladet 53,235 13,493 25.35
Jyllands- 44,558 24,830 55.73
Posten
Politiken 26,340 8884 33.73
TV2 32,968 22,008 66.76
450 PETER BRO AND FILIP WALLBERG

upon—making it the news organization with the lowest relative share of social
interactions—DR had the highest number of interactions. In the case of DR, the users
selected four out of every five news stories for some sort of social interaction. These
types of social interactions can vary, and Table 2 illustrates the average number of
shares, comments and recommendations for every news organization.
Keeping in mind that on average a story was shared was 9 times, recommended
10 times and commented upon 11 times, Table 2 shows that in particular the tabloid
newspaper Ekstra Bladet provides content that is popular with this new generation of
gatekeepers. In all three categories of social interaction, this news organization—that
originated as an “extra” publication to Politiken in the early part of the twentieth
century, but has grown to become the most successful news organization in terms of
readers and revenue on the internet—is most successful. Least successful, in all three
categories when it comes to generating social interactions, is Jyllands-Posten that in the
past has also has been scorned for its slowness in terms of the transition towards digi-
talization.
Perhaps the most important point about the function and influencing factors of
this new generation of gatekeepers is, however, not uncovered by looking at the aver-
age number of social interactions. A closer analysis of the individual news stories that
have been selected—and rejected—by the Facebook users shows that the number of
interactions is in reality driven by a very limited number of news stories. From June
2011 to June 2012 close to 900 news stories received more than a 1000 social interac-
tions, with an average of 2.4 news stories every day, and out of these only about 300
stories were shared, recommended and commented upon more than 2000 times. But
even among the most popular news stories, there are noteworthy differences between
their perceived relevance.

Social Interactions Among a New Generation of Gatekeepers

The news story that was most popular among the new generation of gatekeep-
ers—a story entitled: “Beer Makes Men Smarter”—received a total of 34,610 social inter-
actions and a record number of comments (12,522) and recommendations (14,638)

TABLE 2
Different types of social interaction with news output in major news organizations in
Denmark, June 2011 to June 2012

Media Shared Recommended Commented

Berlingske 4.7 9.4 7.2

BT 9.7 9.6 12.2
DR 9.4 12.4 10.7
Ekstra Bladet 19.4 15.7 19.6
Jyllands-Posten 3.4 4.7 4.6
Politiken 10.5 16.1 14.1
TV2 4.4 5 6.2

Note: Numbers show how many times the average news story was shared, recommended
and commented upon.
 DIGITAL GATEKEEPING 451

(Table 3). The second most popular news story—a news clip entitled: “TV: Woman Shat
in Supermarket”—only received 368 recommendations and 837 comments, but was
shared more than 20,000 times, making it the most shared news item in the period
from 2011 to 2012. Many of the news stories that made the top-20 list have a similar
scope and focus, and it is perhaps no surprise that the two tabloid papers, Ekstra Bladet
and BT, account for most of the news stories that have been interacted within this
period.
Even if many of the social interactions are in effect driven by a limited number of
popular news stories, there are interesting differences between the seven news organi-
zations in terms of the stories the new gatekeepers select for social interaction. In all
three morning papers, the top-five list of the most shared, recommended and com-
mented upon news stories has a majority of stories with an explicit political or cultural
focus. These are news stories that refer to current affairs, prominent politicians (both
national and international), new polls and analyses by political commentators.

TABLE 3
The 20 most shared, recommended and commented upon news stories, June 2011 to June
2012

Headline Media Shared Recommended Commented

Beer Makes Men Smarter Ekstra 7450 14,638 12,522

Bladet
TV: Woman Shat in Supermarket Ekstra 20,200 368 837
Bladet
See This Amazing Clip: Is This the BT 5575 8260 5771
World’s Best Proposal?
Bring Out the Sunscreen: Wonderful Ekstra 232 13,987 4746
Weather Ahead Bladet
Thorning Set Up at Readers Meeting BT 3580 6601 6749
Will Seize Mærsk and Lego BT 3392 3201 10,088
Researcher Launch Frontal Attack at Berlingske 813 5173 8429
Danish Nursery Teachings
Hooters to Open in Denmark Ekstra 2620 6102 4158
Bladet
TV: Terrible Drama in Belgian City Ekstra 4337 6000 2471
Bladet
Drunken Moose Stuck in Tree Ekstra 3137 4199 3452
Bladet
Amalie: That Anders Løkke is Really Ekstra 2226 3666 4526
Okay Bladet
Danish Two-year-old is World-famous TV2 3147 4999 1946
22-Year-old Woman: I Saw My Dog Ekstra 1978 1713 5903
Being Sexually Assaulted Bladet
Danes Are More Drunk Than DR 443 5629 2957
Greenlanders
Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Dead Ekstra 2337 4090 2394
Bladet
Turkey Laughs at Pia Kjærsgaard BT 1674 4433 2701
Drunken Moose Climbs Tree BT 2434 3235 2951
Shocking Conditions in Nurseries TV2 436 3392 4765
Baby Seal Snuck into House to Sleep on BT 2330 4030 2200
Couch
43 Words on the Brink of Extinction Politiken 1562 2229 4714
452 PETER BRO AND FILIP WALLBERG

At Berlingske Tidende, the top-five stories include news stories like: “Let’s Use
Anders Breivik Right” about the Norwegian extremist and “Barfoed and Vestager Form
Alliance” about a new alliance in Danish politics. At Politiken the top stories include:
Historic Moment: Obama Announces He is Pro-gay Marriages” and “Warning in Copen-
hagen: Boil Water Before Drinking”. At Jyllands-Posten the top-five stories include: “Poll:
Blue Majority is Far Away”, “The Government Swallow Increasing Ticket Prices” and
“Johanne S. Threatens to Break Red Bloc”. All of which might in part be explained by
the fact that a parliamentary election was held in Denmark in the autumn of 2011. This
campaign also marked the period when most social interactions occurred.
Out of the 200 most shared, recommended and commented upon news stories
in this year-long period, political news stories with a political actor account for 44 per
cent, while stories related to entertainment account for 18 per cent, and the rest is
divided between subject areas such as internal affairs, culture and sports, etc. At the
two TV stations, there is not a single news story on their top-five list of news items
with the most social interactions that relates to political issues or the actions and atti-
tudes of individual politicians, whereas both news organizations focus on stories about
issues such as drunkenness, how animals and children behave strangely, and other
human-interest stories.
In this sense, the news stories with the highest number of collective social
actions have more in common with the two tabloid newspapers, BT and Ekstra Bladet.
These tabloid newspapers do from time to time include stories about individual politi-
cians, but the news with the most social interactions seldom focuses on politics itself.
Instead, the top-five stories from Ekstra Bladet and BT include stories about how the
prime minister was tricked and trapped at a meeting, and how a prominent member of
the opposition was ridiculed abroad. As such, these stories fall in line with other popu-
lar stories with a human-interest perspective that can prompt laughs, disgust, anguish
and other public outbursts.

The Importance of Actors and Actions

The original studies of gatekeeping and news values were largely based on a
restricted research method, an analysis of a particular sub-profession, and the impor-
tance of a particular technological platform—the electromagnetic telegraphy. White
(1950) followed the work of a single wire editor throughout a week, and Galtung and
Ruge (1965) analysed how Norwegian newspapers informed readers about international
conflicts and crises by way of cable news. Despite this conceptual, methodological and
empirical dependency on telegraphy, these two studies from the 1950s and 1960s have
come to influence many later studies within the field of journalism studies.
The concepts of gatekeepers and news values have come to “capture the imagi-
nation”—as Reese and Ballinger (2001, 642) have rightly noted about White’s work. But
even if the concept of gatekeeping is as “useful now” as when the concept was coined,
as Pamela Shoemaker and Vos (2009, 130) have written—and one can also add the
concept of news values—the prejudices of a wire editor towards the Pope, warm beer
and daylight time savings does not tell us much about how the “last”, “final” and “ter-
minal” gatekeepers in this century work and which values direct their decisions. Simi-
larly, the concept of news values is still very much relevant, judging from scholarly
 DIGITAL GATEKEEPING 453

references to it, but many new news values have since been highlighted by later
researchers.
This study also suggests that we need to think of gatekeeping and news values
in new ways in order to capture current developments in what David Manning White
already in 1950 described as a complex communication process (White 1950, 390). This
process has not become any less complex as new types of gatekeepers have appeared
with the rise of social media, and this study suggests that some new values have
become important to understand the news stories audiences receive. In this context,
two factors seem particularly important: actors and actions. The first factor is based on
an important, previously noted dichotomy, between “known” and “unknown” persons,
places, etc., when it comes to the flow of news stories in the social media.
At the top-20 list of Danish news stories with the highest degree of social inter-
action, there are references to well-known companies, like Mærsk and Lego, and promi-
nent individuals, like CEOs, the present and past prime minister, and members of the
political opposition. This is a news criterion that corresponds with Galtung and Ruge’s
(1965, 68) original reference to the importance of “elite nations” and “elite persons”.
But other news stories that made the top-20 list of stories with the most social interac-
tions focus on main actors who are unknown. Some of the most shared, recommended
and commented upon news stories from 2011 and 2012 simply refer to “a two-year-old
child”, “a 22-year-old women”, “a researcher”, “a woman” and “men” in general.
The main reason why news stories with these unknown actors make the top-20
list can in most instances be explained by another key factor and criteria that Galtung
and Ruge—and many other later researchers—have not accounted for. Most probably
because these types of news stories have not been part of the content from the news
media they have analysed. Often these main actors have expressed or experienced
something out of the ordinary—something “grotesque” and “abnormal”—that in this
new era of gatekeeping merits the publication of a news stories. “Woman Shat in
Supermarket”, “Drunken Moose Stuck in Tree” and “Baby Seal Snuck into House to
Sleep on Couch” are such examples.
The combination of these two main factors—actors and actions—can help
explain some of the news stories that were shared, recommended and commented
upon the most from 2011 and 2012, but there are important differences between the
news organizations included in this study. The morning newspapers, Politiken, Berlingske
and Jyllands-Posten, might experience a high degree of social interaction when it comes
to news stories where well-known persons, companies, etc. are covered in the wake of
a classic issue, like the result of a new poll or a new political statement. But they do
not carry news stories to any significant degree about unknowns who behave abnor-
mally, which is a type of news story that generates a lot of social interaction in other
news organizations.
Future research about the relation between news media and social media, in
general, and the relation between gatekeepers and their news values, in particular, is,
of course, needed to heighten our understanding of what types of news stories are
shared, recommended and commented upon—and to help us explain why that is. For
as Shoemaker and Vos (2009, 130) have written, the development of new technologies
and journalistic ideologies challenges us “to think creatively about applying the theory
to a changing world and to adapt research methodology that keeps pace” (130). Hope-
fully, new types of studies, like the one presented here, can help prompt a better
454 PETER BRO AND FILIP WALLBERG

understanding in the future of the function and influencing factors of a new generation
of gatekeepers, even if much more research, more empirical data and more reflections
are needed.

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Peter Bro (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), Centre for

Journalism, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark. E-mail: ppe@journalism.
sdu.dk
Filip Wallberg, Centre for Journalism, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark.
E-mail: fillip@journalism.sdu.dk