Blog Post #10

 EOTO: What I learned 

Starting out she gave two definitions 

"Gatekeeping is the activity of controlling and/or limiting general access to something" - Oxford Dictionary

"Hiding you interest and hobbies to keep them from growing to be "mainstream""- Urban Dictionary 

Both of these have a similar meaning one is just more general to social media. For example, you could be on tiktok watching a girl do a makeup video and she uses this beautiful lipstick but refuses to tell anyone what it is. You would see people in the comments calling her out for 'gatekeeping' the lipstick from her viewers. This term being used in this way has turn it into what we would consider a 'slang' term. Meaning it is used widely among a certain group/area of people. 

The term being originally created in 1943 by a German social psychologist, Kurt Lewin. Beginning as a widely used term in psychology starting out meaning to do "nothing but to block unwanted or useless things by using a gate". (Communication Theory)

Gatekeeping Theory has a different understanding than general gatekeeping. Gatekeeping theory is a situation where events are covered by mass media and are either 'passed through' or 'closed off' and don't get mainstream media attention. This allows for Gatekeeping Theory to fall into a role of surveillance and monitoring data. 

She stated in her presentation that Gatekeeping Theory gives news editors the ability to play the role of "Mr.Gates", meaning that they get to decide what goes on to be published/presented to the public. 

The listed pros and cons of Gatekeeping Theory that she gave were:

Pros:

-Helps to differentiate the difference between real and fake news

-Helps to make sure we are getting the most relevant information 

Cons:

-Some important information or news is never seen or heard of

-Each news outlet has the ability to pick and choose what does and what does not get published

All of her pros and cons fell into the Gatekeeping Theory and I could not find any others. 

https://www.communicationtheory.org/gatekeeping-theory/