Gatekeeping Similar For Online , Print Journalists

__________________________________________ Gatekeeping theory has been called “one of the most easily accessible theories”1 and is certainly one of the most enduring in mass communication research.2 Shoemaker writes that the basic idea of gatekeeping—that there is some selectivity in how and how many news items are presented—has always been apparent.3 Initial inquiries into gatekeeping theory looked at the decisions of a lone gatekeeper.4 However, subsequent analyses of that research contend that the work of those individual gatekeepers was influenced by other levels of gatekeeping forces, such as the professional routines of journalists and the influence of the news organization,5 thus revealing gatekeeping to be more complex than previously thought. In fact, Shoemaker, Eichholz, Kim and Wrigley assert that “gatekeeping in mass communication can be seen as the overall process through which the social reality transmitted by the news media is constructed.”6 Recent efforts7 have integrated gatekeeping theory with Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchical model of news influences, which allows for the study of gatekeeping on five levels of analysis—individual, routine, organizational characteristics, extramedia and ideological.8 Gatekeeping theory has also been labeled an effective conceptual approach to studying online journalists.9 This project seeks to further extend these areas of research through an examination of the influence of gatekeeping forces at the individual and routine levels on the professional role conceptions of print and online daily newspaper journalists.