Gatecheckers at the Visual News Stream

Over the past 65 years, scholars have reframed the original model of gatekeeping to reflect the changing dynamics of news creation, distribution, and curation. In recent years, communication technologies have opened digital news gates to a proliferation of images captured by professionals and amateurs alike. Anyone with a camera or cell phone can shoot and distribute photographs and videos on the internet. Social media facilitates audience-to-audience sharing through tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, and Snapchat. This stream of visuals, along with the ease with which citizen journalists, bloggers, and tweeters can create and publish content, has changed the gatekeeping process. Few scholars, however, have addressed the impact that visuals have on the gatekeeping model, which was developed using text and broadcast stories. To address the changing role of the visual journalist and the audience, the authors conducted two studies. First, qualitative elite interviews with key visual decision-makers in Europe and the US provided questions for further exploration in the second study—an online cross-sectional survey of visual journalists who belong to three leading US organizations. The questions in this quantitative survey were also influenced by Shoemaker and Reese's hierarchy of influences and Bennett's multigated model. Findings indicate changes in the way visual journalists conceptualize their role and that of the audience. Based on these changes, this article proposes a new model of visual gatekeeping—the twenty-first-century visual news stream where “gatecheckers” select, verify, and curate visuals but no longer solely control their distribution the way traditional gatekeepers did.     

Talking to the Broadcasters on Twitter: Networked Gatekeeping in Twitter Conversations with Journalists

Drawing upon the theory of networked gatekeeping, this study describes how citizens engage in Twitter conversations with journalists and illustrates the power dynamic between traditional gatekeepers (journalists) and the gated (news audience). The power dynamic is discussed along four attributes of the gated—political power, information production ability, relationship with gatekeepers, and information alternatives. Results show that citizens interacted with gatekeepers by sharing information/opinion, social chats, and self-serving promotion of individual opinions and agendas. Politically active citizens interacted more often with journalists who share similar ideology. The citizens have varying degrees of political power, reflected by their different levels of involvement and influence in political discourse online. The implications for gatekeeping are also addressed.     

Approaches to Studying Public Library Networked Community Information Initiatives: A Review of the Literature and Overview of a Current Study

In a world characterized by the use of rapidly advancing technology, public libraries are championing the rights of the individual to equitable public access to information provided over the Internet. But beyond general connectivity, libraries are also facilitating citizens' access to networked community information (CI) by actively linking users with relevant sites, by hosting pages for other service providers, and by participating in community networking initiatives. For individuals, the availability of networked CI means that they can access it at anytime and from any place, including the home, office, and public library. This article reviews recent trends in the networked CI literature, including public library involvement, and then discusses a major study underway for which multiple methods are being used to collect data from users, librarians, and service providers in three states. Particular attention is given to explaining the use of theory specification to apply Dervin's sense-making framework in an online environment.     

结构性缺失:网络时代把关理论的重新考察

把关理论的基本结构由把关人、门卡、把关对象、把关机制、把关关系等要素组成。传统把关理论的主要贡献在于对把关人、把关过程和把关分析层次的重视,忽视了对把关对象、把关关系、把关机制等要素的研究,导致了结构性的缺失。在网络时代,把关理论研究需要进行结构性调适,如从沉默到挑战的把关对象,从支配到对抗/协作的把关关系,从单一到多元的把关机制。基于以上要素的层次分析,提出了动态化、透明度、复杂性是网络时代把关理论结构性研究的三大趋势。     

Participatory Communication with Social Media

Abstract Major museums worldwide are starting to use social media such as blogs, podcasts and content shares to engage users via participatory communication. This marks a shift in how museums publicly communicate their role as custodians of cultural content and so presents debate around an institution's attitude towards cultural authority. It also signifies a new possible direction for museum learning. This article reports on a range of initiatives that demonstrate how participatory communication via social media can be integrated into museum practices. It argues that the social media space presents an ideal opportunity for museums to build online communities of interest around authentic cultural information, and concludes with some recent findings on and recommendations for social media implementation.     

An Integrated Spatial Search Engine for Maps and Aerial Photographs on a Google Maps API Platform

A traditional library catalog does not do justice to maps and aerial photographs. Text can never fully describe them and maps' and aerial photographs' geographic coverage or perimeters cannot be displayed visually in the online public access catalog (OPAC), so searching based on their textual metadata without specific spatial reference data used also for display purposes is often not enough to locate relevant items. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem's (HUJI) Geography Department has developed a spatial search engine for their scanned aerial photographs collection that allows users to locate one or more aerial photographs according to the area of the Earth's surface that was photographed and their accompanying metadata. The Humanities and Social Sciences Library, which holds a large unscanned print map collection, has asked to integrate a similar map search mechanism in the Department's existing search engine, and a new website was launched in December 2015 (http://ccg.huji.ac.il/aerialphotos/) showing the aerial photographs' center points alongside the maps' rectangle perimeter. The search engine retrieves maps and aerial photographs that intersect with a user-drawn rectangle. This article discusses the characteristics of these collections, the rationale behind searching for maps and aerial photographs together, and the process of defining and building this spatial search engine. This method allows users to view which items are available in their area of interest side-by-side, on a Google Maps background map.     

Hybrid gatekeeping framework for value-added information services

Information control processes designed to prioritize the most relevant information are important for enhancing the service experience of users. Gatekeeping is the process of filtering and disseminating information in online information services. This study investigates the effects of gatekeeping activities on information services and the resulting impact on the value of such services from a user's perspective in an information service environment characterized by online and offline transactions. Various hybrid gatekeeping activities are derived through focus group interviews with information services planners. A survey of information service users reveals values that could be obtained from the information services. The results of these two data gathering tools suggest an information service framework for hybrid environments. The findings enable the development of value-added information services for users through efficient information control in hybrid online and offline environments.     

The Discursive (Re)construction of Journalism’s Gatekeeping Role

Through the lens of discursive institutionalism, and drawing on an extensive corpus of metajournalistic discourse dating from 2000 to 2017, this study considers how journalists have defined and (re)constructed their gatekeeping role against the backdrop of seismic changes confronting their field. In so doing, it considers the legitimizing or delegitimizing discourses journalistic actors use when addressing journalism’s gatekeeping role.     

THE JOURNALIST IS MARKETING THE NEWS

This study, based on case studies of three online newsrooms, seeks to understand the patterns of how journalists use social media in their news work. Through 150 hours of observations and interviews with 31 journalists, the study found that journalists are normalizing social media while also reworking some of their norms and routines around it, a process of journalistic negotiation. They are balancing editorial autonomy and the other norms that have institutionalized journalism, on one hand, and the increasing influence exerted by the audience—perceived to be the key for journalism's survival—on the other. In doing so, journalists are also seeing a reworking of their traditional gatekeeping role, finding themselves having to also market the news.     

Copyright and You: Copyright Instruction for College Students in the Digital Age

Educators are concerned about the ease with which new digital technologies permit intellectual property to be discovered, re-purposed and shared. What do our students know about copyright compliance and academic integrity and how are these critical information competencies being addressed? Librarians have the authority for copyright-related instruction on campus and can provide both the point-of-need instruction and expertise to ensure that all students are informed about these issues. This article discusses the importance of developing copyright education for students as part of an overall information literacy curriculum by describing the development of a relevant, active learning online course targeting students' competencies as both users of and creators of creative content.     

Social media as a platform in academic library marketing: A comparative study

Social media like Facebook have become popular tools for different organizations like libraries in marketing practice. To build relationships with library users, libraries hope social media can engage its user communities actively with their collections, services, and activities. This paper aims at evaluating the effectiveness of using social media as a platform in marketing through a questionnaire on the Facebook page of the University of Hong Kong Libraries (HKUL), comparing the perspectives of students and faculty members. Both the current situation of HKUL's Facebook page and the reasons affecting users' interest and participation in the page are evaluated, in order to suggest better strategies for the library to deal with the needs of library users in the future. Other university libraries can also gain new insights from the study.This research has the following key findings: 1. The marketing practices of HKUL's Facebook page generally did not receive adequate attention and reactions from users; 2. Students were more engaged than faculty members in HKUL's Facebook page, as students use more varieties of library services than faculty members; 3. User needs, social media content, and interactions generally affected user acceptance of the library's Facebook marketing.     

A comparative study on source credibility and use in multinational nuclear talks

This study examines US and South Korean journalists' use of sources and their perceptions of source credibility in covering the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions. In particular, this study analyzes the relationship between journalists' perceptions of source credibility and the media's source use in terms of the aggregate and individual levels. Results of content analysis of US and South Korean newspapers are compared with data from a survey of US and South Korean journalists who covered the six-party nuclear talks. Government officials are dominant sources in media coverage of the talks because of their high level of accessibility and credibility. US and South Korean journalists assigned the greatest credibility to government officials of their own country. The two groups showed significant differences in their perceptions of credibility of South Korean officials, North Korean officials, Japanese officials, and Japanese experts. Moreover, this study finds that individual journalists' perceptions of source credibility were as strongly correlated with their individual use of sources as with the news media's aggregate use of sources. Implications of the findings are discussed in the context of media sociology, in particular gatekeeping.     

THINKING ABOUT CITIZEN JOURNALISM

This study seeks to understand how community newspaper editors negotiate the professional complexities posed by citizen journalism—a phenomenon that, even in the abstract, would appear to undermine their gatekeeping control over content. Through interviews with 29 newspaper editors in Texas, we find that some editors either favor or disfavor the use of citizen journalism primarily on philosophical grounds, while others favor or disfavor its use mainly on practical grounds. This paper presents a mapping of these philosophical-versus-practical concerns as a model for visualizing the conflicting impulses at the heart of a larger professional debate over the place and purpose of user-generated content in the news production process. Moreover, these findings are viewed in light of gatekeeping, which, we argue, offers a welcome point of entry for the study of participatory media work as it evolves at news organizations large and small alike. In contributing to a growing body of literature on user-generated content in news contexts, this study points to the need for better understanding the causes and consequences of journalism's hyperlocal turn, as digitization enables newswork to serve increasingly niche geographic and virtual communities.     

The Open SESMO (Search Engine & Social Media Optimization) Project: Linked and Structured Data for Library Subscription Databases to Enable Web-scale Discovery in Search Engines

ABSTRACT

Today's learners operate in digital environments which can be largely navigated with no human intervention. At the same time, libraries spend millions and millions of dollars to provide access to content which our users may never know is available to them. Through the Open SESMO (Search Engine & Social Media Optimization) database project, Montana State University (MSU) Library applied search engine optimization and structured data with the Schema.org vocabulary, linked data models and practices, and social media optimization techniques to all the library's subscribed databases. Our research shows that Open SESMO creates significant return-on-investment with substantial increased traffic to our paid resources by our users as evidenced through analytics and metrics. In the core research of the article, we take a quantitative look at the pre/post results to assess the Open SESMO method and its impact on organic search referrals and use of the collection analyzing data from three distinct fall semesters. Returns include demonstrated library value through database recommendations, connecting researchers to subject librarians, and increased visitation to our library's paid databases with growth in organic search referrals, impressions, and click-through rates. This project offers a standard and innovative practice for other libraries to employ in surfacing their paid databases to users through the open web by applying structured and linked data methods.     

Cost-Effectiveness and Benefits of Outsourcing Authority Control

ABSTRACT

This article illustrates the collaboration of three entities- the library, its online system and the authority service vendor-to achieve online authority control in a medium-sized academic library efficiently and cost-effectively. The authority service vendor checks and revises (as needed) the headings of the library's new bibliographic records, providing new authority records for them. Through a separate notification service, the vendor also provides revised authority records for the existing authority file, alerting the library when in-house online maintenance is needed. In this online environment, authority records and bibliographic records are maintained automatically by the vendor authority service. Thus, using various authority heading reports which can be generated by the local online system in conjunction with the notification service, the library concentrates its authority work on the elimination or correction of obsolete headings. The authority vendor services are effective and reduce the cost of maintaining the online catalog. Ultimately, accurate standardized headings enhance the ease and effectiveness of online searching and retrieval for all who consult the library's catalog.     

Frictionless Sharing and Digital Promiscuity

This article analyses the recent Facebook innovation of “frictionless sharing”, a term which describes a smoother and wider distribution of content by individual users and a less overtly acknowledged but more efficient instrumentalization of users' immaterial labour within a structure of corporate monetization. It builds on my recent work on “the sharing subject” of contemporary digital media, in which I argue that current online social networking practices, in their emphasis on “sharing” content with networks of contacts, construct and validate the networked subject according to a version of neoliberal individualism. Moreover, the construction of this subject position implicitly recalls the heteronormativity of AIDS panic, through an unlikely rebranding of promiscuity as a desirable and successful mode of interactivity. If the new rhetoric of “sharing” erases the riskiness of circulation previously encoded in dominant images of virality, notably behaviours associated with HIV, then what is the relationship of the projected potential of “frictionless sharing” to existing normative frames of ethics and morality? In approaching this question, I revisit significant queer interventions into concepts of community and risk that emerged in the post-AIDS context, notably Tim Dean's recent examination of the barebacking subculture to which mediations of an idealized frictionlessness are also central.     

All About Me,I Mean,You: The Trouble with Narrative Authority in Self-Help Literature

By considering a neglected realm of narrative discourse, this article contributes to the communication scholarship on narrative authority. Authors of self-help books face a challenge that demands different methods of cultivating authority. Rather than do so by articulating professional expertise, they construct their authority based on personal narratives of self-transformation. Throughout the self-help genre's history, a particular type of talking cure has been intimately woven with ideas of selfhood. Positive thinking holds that our thoughts produce reality. Narratives about the self then place a tremendous power in and responsibility on the self, just as they deny the influence of social structures. In this study I aim to expose the implicit values of selfhood and storytelling that are occluded by the explicit stories of a free and helping self espoused in self-help and to demonstrate that that occlusion is enacted through the cultivation of narrative authority.     

All hands on deck to tweet #sandy: Networked governance of citizen coproduction in turbulent times

While citizens previously took a back seat to government, citizen coproduction of disaster risk communications through social media networks is emerging. We draw on information-processing, citizen coproduction, and networked governance theories to examine the governance and impact of networked interactions in the following question: When government's capacity in information-processing and communication is overwhelmed by unfolding disasters, how do government and citizens coproduce disaster risk communications? During the Hurricane Sandy, we collected 132,922 #sandy tweets to analyze the structure and networked interactions using social network analysis. We then conducted case study of the government's social media policy governance networks. Networked citizen interactions – their agility in voluntarily retweeting the government's #sandy tweets and tweeting their own messages – magnified the agility and reach of the government's #sandy disaster communications. Our case study indicates the criticality of social media policy governance networks in empowering the lead agencies and citizens to coproduce disaster communication public services.     

Evaluating Usage and Impact of Networked Electronic Resources through Point-of-Use Surveys: A MINES for Libraries™ Study

This article presents a literature review of methods for evaluating serials, or networked electronic resources, usage, and focuses on point-of-use intercept Web surveys. In the context of the MINES for Libraries protocol administered by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and derived from the indirect cost study methodologies developed by Franklin and Plum, the article discusses a variety of point-of-use Web survey implementation methodologies used in libraries. It discusses sampling plan options and articulates issues related to the mandatory and optional versions of the point-of-use Web survey protocols with an emphasis on nonresponse bias. The article provides a set of methods that libraries can use to continue to evaluate their networked electronic services in innovative ways to better serve the research, teaching, and learning needs of their users.     

基于Web2.0的网络用户群“社会性”行为的系统分析

以基于Web2.0的社会网络用户“社会联系”为研究对象,系统地分析“仿生学”意义上群体行为的社会特征,并呈逻辑关联地分析从“人机交互”到“人信息交互”、“社会交互”发展历程中的动力因素及本质特征,社会网络信息资源生成模式的“自组织”现象及其弊端,指出从语义关联角度集成社会网络资源的“社会语义信息系统”的发展方向;在以基于“社会提示”的社会导航及Bradford分布对社会网络的信息资源所产生的过度离散现象进行实例分析的基础上,得出相关结论。