Gatekeeping (Communication Concepts)

Gatekeeping in the broadest sense is a process of selection by which the billions of messages available in the world each day are transformed into the merely hundreds of messages that might then reach a given person. Besides selection, gatekeeping involves all aspects of messsage encoding: withholding, transmisson, shaping, display, repetition, and timing of information as it goes from sender to receiver. Gates are decision or action points. Gatekeepers determine both which units get in a channel and which pass from section to section (that is, what events or states of being occur in the channel). This concise yet comprehensive look at gatekeeping explores the historical development and importance of the concept within the scholarly framework first theorized by Kurt Lewin and later applied by David Manning White. The term has proven popular with mass communication scholars, but can also be more widely used in the general study of communication. How does information get into communication channels? What can influence gatekeepers? How do journalists' differing rules as news gatherers and processes affect gatekeeping? Does gatekeeping result in a condensed version of an objective reality? The author helps broaden our understanding of the concept by viewing gatekeeping from several levels of analysis - individual, communication routines, organizaional, extra-media institutional and social systems. This introductory map of a vital communication concept is ideal for practising communication researchers and their students. The explication of fundamental concepts in this and other volumes in the series will also be of use to those who study and use communicaion processes in related disciplines, such as journalism, sociology, psychology, social psychology, organizational studies, political science, and policy studies.Shoemaker, Pamela J. is the author of 'Gatekeeping (Communication Concepts)', published 1991 under ISBN 9780803944374 and ISBN 0803944373.