Gatekeepers

When we think about what happened last week in the world the most important piece of new most people would agree that to be the Greece elections. But...who decides wht is important? Do we know about Greece because someone put this setting agenda? Who sets the agenda for media?

• Compelling news events: in this circumstances is naturally decided. there are close to us, so everybody agrees that this is something worth to go in the news.

• Media gatekeepers: the Gatekeeper decides what information should move to group or individual and what information should not. Here, the gatekeeper are the decision makers who letting the whole social system.

Who are the media gatekeepers?

• Media editors. They decide where the piece of new will go, how long...

• Media owners. They own the newspaper, so they might have economic interests.

• Journalists/reporters. They have a certain level of autonomy.

• Media format. The fact that the content is limited in space make us decide what is more worth telling and what is not. what length to give to that piece of new...

• Working routines, Government, Advertisers, Lobbies...(and more).

Algorithms as the new gatekeepers

Algorithms are the new gatekeepers that has emerged. They are just instructions for computers that specify how to act (eg. handle date). What is the role of individuals in the performance of the Google algorithm? Do we have any power to influence Google results/contents?

Algorithms are simply instructions that determine what computers do with a piece of information, or set of instructions, they are the guts of everything we now do with computers.

Facebooks “Edgerank” determines what you see on your newsfeed based on an algorithm, Google uses algorithms to determine the order of responses to a search, sign up to a blog site, and an algorithm sends you a “thanks for joining” note of some sort, and it is the application of algorithms to the mass of so called Big Data that is enabling the extraction of individual behavioral information. Here´s a little video explaining the concept of algorithms as the new gatekeepers: