Filtering 2008 US presidential election news on YouTube by elites and nonelites: An examination of the democratizing potential of the internet

Abstract

The goals of this study are to explore several claims about the democratizing potential of the internet and to extend gatekeeping theory into user-generated content (UGC) domain. A quantitative content analysis of the most popular YouTube political news videos during the 2008 US presidential election was conducted to investigate the degree to which nonelites were able to partake in mainstream public discourse. We found that elites dominated first and second filters (news sourcing and news production) in the flow of online news, while nonelites dominated the third filter (news distribution). These results suggest that an update to the traditional gatekeeping model is needed to reflect the realities of today’s user-driven communication environment.

Keywords

elites empowerment gatekeeping internet optimists internet pessimists nonelites sociology of news user-generated content YouTube 2008 US presidential election

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alexa Internet (2011a) Top sites. Available at: http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/News (consulted June 17, 2011).

Alexa Internet (2011b) Top sites: The top 500 sites on the web. Available at: http://www.alexa.com/topsites (consulted June 17, 2011).

Antony

Thomas

(2010) This is citizen journalism at its finest: YouTube and the public sphere in the Oscar Grant shooting incident. New Media & Society 12(8): 1280–1296.

Bass

(1969) Redefining the gatekeeper concept: A U.N. radio case study. Journalism Quarterly 46: 69–72.

Bennett

Iyengar

(2008) A new era of minimal effects? The changing foundations of political communication. Journal of Communication 58: 707–731.

Bimber

(2003) Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bruns

(2005) Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production. New York: P. Lang.

Bruns

(2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: P. Lang.

Chadwick

(2006) Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies. New York: Oxford University Press.

10.

Chaffee

Metzger

(2001) The end of mass communication? Mass Communication and Society 4(4): 365–379.

11.

Davis

Owen

(1998) New Media and American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.

12.

Dylko

McCluskey

(in press). Media effects in an era of rapid technological transformation: A case of user-generated content and political participation. Communication Theory.

13.

Entman

(2003) Cascading activation: Contesting the White House’s frame after 9/11. Political Communication 20: 415–432.

14.

Freelon

(2009) ReCal3: Reliability for 3+ Coders. Available at: http://dfreelon.org/utils/recalfront/recal3/ (consulted June 17, 2011).

15.

Gamson

Wolfsfeld

(1993) Movements and media as interacting systems. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 528(1): 114–125.

16.

Gans

(1979) Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time. New York: Pantheon Books.

17.

Greppi

(2008) Couric gets Murrow’s blessing: Recognition backs Kaplan’s contention that ratings will grow. Television Week, 7 July.

18.

Gueorguieva

(2008) Voters, MySpace and YouTube: The impact of alternative communication channels on the 2006 election cycle and beyond. Social Science Computer Review 26(3): 288–300.

19.

Gulati

Williams

(2010) Congressional candidates’ use of YouTube in 2008: Its frequency and rationale. Journal of Information Technology & Politics 7(2): 93–109.

20.

Harp

Tremayne

(2007) Programmed by the people: The intersection of political communication and the YouTube generation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, CA, 24–28 May.

21.

Hayes

Krippendorff

(2007) Answering the call for a standard reliability measure for coding data. Communication Methods and Measures 1: 77–89.

22.

Heffernan

(2009) The YouTube presidency. The New York Times Magazine, 10 April.

23.

Hess

(2009) Resistance up in smoke: Analyzing the limitations of deliberation on YouTube. Critical Studies in Media Communication 26(5): 411–434.

24.

Hindman

(2009) The Myth of Digital Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

25.

Holsti

(1969) Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

26.

Kperogi

(2011) Cooperation with the corporation? CNN and the hegemonic cooptation of citizen journalism through iReport.com. New Media & Society 13(2): 314–329.

27.

Krippendorff

(2004) Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

28.

Leung

(2009) User-generated content on the internet: An examination of gratifications, civic engagement and psychological empowerment. New Media & Society 11(8): 1327–1347.

29.

Lombard

Snyder-Duch

Bracken

(2002) Content analysis in mass communication: Assessment and reporting of intercoder reliability. Human Communication Research 28(4): 587–604.

30.

Maratea

(2008) The e-rise and fall of social problems: The blogosphere as a public arena. Social Problems 55: 139–160.

31.

May

(2010) Who tube? How YouTube’s news and politics space is going mainstream. International Journal of Press/Politics 15(4): 499–511.

32.

Morozov

(2009) How dictators watch us on the web. Prospect, 165, 18 November.

33.

Munger

(2008) Blogging and political information: Truth or truthiness. Public Choice 134: 125–128.

34.

NielsenNetRatings (2010) Available at: http://en-us.nielsen.com/rankings/insights/rankings/internet (consulted June 17, 2011).

35.

Pan

Hembrooke

Joachims

Lorigo

Gay

Granka

(2007) In Google we trust: Users’ decisions on rank, position, and relevance. Journal of Computer-mediated Communication 12: 801–823.

36.

Pass

Chowdhury

Torgeson

(2006) A picture of search. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Scalable Information Systems. New York: ACM Press.

37.

Perlmutter

(2008) Blogwars: The New Political Battleground. New York: Oxford University Press.

38.

Pew Internet and American Life Project (2009a) The audience for online video-sharing sites shoots up. Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/13–The-Audience-for-Online-VideoSharing-Sites-Shoots-Up.aspx (consulted June 17, 2011).

39.

Pew Internet and American Life Project (2009b) Daily Internet activities. Available at: http://www.pewInternet.org/Static-Pages/Trend-Data/Online-Activities-Daily.aspx (consulted June 17, 2011).

40.

Reese

Danielian

(1989) Intermedia influence and the drug issue: Convergence on cocaine. In: Shoemaker

(ed.) Communication Campaigns About Drugs: Government, Media and the Public. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 29–46.

41.

Riffe

Lacy

Fico

(1998) Analyzing Media Messages: Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

42.

Shirky

(2009) The net advantage. Prospect, 165, 11 December.

43.

Shoemaker

(1991) Gatekeeping. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

44.

Shoemaker

(1997) A new gatekeeping model. In: Berkowitz

(ed.) Social Meaning of News: A Text-Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 57–62.

45.

Shoemaker

Reese

(1991) Mediating the Message: Theories of Influence on Mass Media Content. New York: Longman.

46.

Shoemaker

Eichholz

Kim

Wrigley

(2001) Individual and routine forces in gatekeeping. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 78(2): 233–246.

47.

Sigal

(1973) Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking. Lexington, MA: D.C.Heath.

48.

Silverstein

Henzinger

Marais

Moricz

(1998) Analysis of a very large Alta Vista query log. SRC Technical Note, 1998-014, 26 October.

49.

Smith

(1993) News sources and power elites in news coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 70(2): 393–403.

50.

Stelter

(2008) Viewership of debate sets record. The New York Times, 23 January, A18.

51.

Sunstein

(2006) Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press.

52.

Trippi

(2004) The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything. New York: HarperCollins.

53.

White

(1950) The ‘Gate Keeper’: A case study in the selection of news. Journalism Quarterly 27: 383–390.

54.

Williams

Delli Carpini

(2004) Monica and Bill all the time and everywhere: The collapse of gatekeeping and agenda setting in the new media environment. American Behavioral Scientist 47(9): 1208–1230.

55.

Winner

(2003) The Internet and dreams of democratic renewal. In: Anderson

Cornfield

(eds) The Civic Web: Online Politics and Democratic Values. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 167–183.

56.

Wittebols

(1995) News and the institutional perspective: Sources in terror stories. Canadian Journal of Communication 20(1). Available at: http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/847/753 (consulted May 2009).