Editorial Versus Audience Gatekeeping: Analyzing News Selection and Consumption Dynamics in Online News Media

In recent years, we have witnessed a paradigm shift in news consumption. In traditional news media organizations, a small number of expert editors are responsible for selecting news stories that are consumed by all news readers (the audience). However, with the growing popularity of social media as a news consumption medium, a part of the editorial power of selecting news stories has shifted to the audience who select and share the stories that can reach a large number of consumers. In this paper, we analyze data from two popular news media sites—The New York Times and The Guardian, and characterize the considerable differences in the types of stories selected by the audience and expert news editors. We also find that story selections by audience vary significantly across different social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and email. We contextualize the differences utilizing media and communication theory and discuss their implications for news readers and media organizations.