Editors, Users and Post-Publication Gatekeeping: A Study of News Ranking on Chinese Digital Native Media

ABSTRACT

The rapid development of digital media as a major platform for news consumption has stimulated a variety of debates about how journalism is changing in the internet era. With a gate open to user-generated content (UGC), there are increasing concerns that the editors’ gatekeeping role would be eroded. This study examines the roles of editors and users in post-publication gatekeeping by conducting cross-lagged analysis of news ranking on Chinese digital native media. The sample comprised of 2412 unique news items from Pear Video. Our findings reaffirm that between editors and users there is a disparity of interest while ranking public and non-public affairs. Differing from prior studies, this study observes that editors rank news items of non-public affairs higher while users rank items of public affairs higher. More importantly, this study discloses that editors and users practice different gatekeeping mechanisms under differential UGC news topics. They tend to agree with each other on the news ranking of non-public affairs while run in opposite directions on the news ranking of public affairs. The reasons for and implications of post-publication gatekeeping theory are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-publication gatekeeping
• news ranking
• digital native media
• content analysis
• user-generated content
• Pear Video

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Nan ZHANG, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China [grant number 2072021113], Social Science Foundation of Fujian Province [grant number FJ2021C062].