The rise of a news gaterkeeper: trust in news selection on social media by peer users

How audiences consume news media is impacted by the radically changing news landscape. Traditional news outlets are accompanied by digital and interactive news platforms, such as websites, applications and news updates on social media sites. News media are ubiquitous and the infinite stream of news updates tends to become overwhelming. In order to tackle the wildering diversity of information updates audiences develop media literacy skills (Nyre & Puustinen, 2013). This multi-method research aims to investigate how users on the social media platforms Facebook and Twitter are entrusted by peers to filter the news offer to a manageable information flow. Historically, the news flow was controlled by gatekeepers such as journalists, news agencies and editors: they had the decisive power to select the ‘newsworthy events’ (Harcup & O’Neill, 2011). The news supply was scarce, so information on current affairs needed to be reduced to a limited news selection. The Internet, however, brought an end to this scarcity in supply. Especially social media have challenged the journalist’s right to decide for the public what news is (Knight & Cook, 2013). News readers have become gatewatchers and can participate in the online publishing process (Bruns, 2005). On social media sites, news items are being shared with peers, whether or not supplemented with a personal statement. As a result, social media increasingly serve as news aggregators, linking to news content that appears on various websites. Shared news updates infiltrate the audiences’ news media repertoires, which is defined as the result of accumulated selective exposure to specific news media outlets (Hasebrink & Popp, 2006). This research aims to investigate how news consumers decide which peer users they trust to filter the online news supply. Trust can be defined as a relationship that associates two parties who accept the vulnerability to the actions of others with the expectation of a particular outcome (Pavlickova, 2013). Looking at news consumption on social media, this relationship links the audiences who seek news updates with people or organisations that select, (re)phrase and present news updates and information. Moreover, news found on alternative information sources like social networks are deemed to be more authentic (Quandt, 2012). The study proposes a multi-method design. An online questionnaire (N = 1229) has been launched in Flanders (northern part of Belgium), addressing Facebook and/or Twitter users. The survey covers topics such as general news consumption, the use of social media and social media as a news platform. The quantitative data is then thickened by an exploratory research (n = 20) that combines in-depth interviews with social network analysis. This research phase provides a thorough insight in trust strategies applied between users of a social network. Results will provide an insight on the gatekeeping role users assign to peer users, looking at Twitter and Facebook. The two media platforms are compared, elaborating on the similarities and differences of the platforms, with an emphasis on trust strategies in news selection.