The Internet ended editorial gatekeeping between content producers and audiences

Evidence

By the beginning of the year 2000, there were in excess of a billion Web pages in existence, as compared to only 1.3 million fi ve years earlier. Besides the sheer volume of material it can accommodate, the Internet is the fi rst mass medium without gatekeepers. No intermediaries, such as editors, publishers, or producers, stand between the content provider and the distribution of the message. In addition, the creation and dissemination of content require only a modest fi nancial investment. Anyone can place a message before a potentially global audience. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 147

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of media ecology / gatekeeping theory (e.g., White Noise themes of mediated information, and the broader media studies body of work on the public sphere). — connects to: Early gatekeeping defined blogging against women’s online journaling to claim seriousness — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 107; Internet ad economics collapsed the boundary between high and low taste within elite magazines — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 371; Professional media staff gatekeeping determines the deliberative quality of public opinion — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 29 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Internet ad economics collapsed the boundary between high and low taste within elite magazines #expands (0.85) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 371
• Platforms replace asymmetry with reciprocity but lose editorial filtering #expands (0.85) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 33
• Professional media staff gatekeeping determines the deliberative quality of public opinion #contradicts (0.80) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 29
• The internet collapsed traditional gatekeepers into view-count metrics #expands (0.80) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 291
• The rise of personalized web consumption ended broadcasters’ power to compel attention #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 921
• Online fame bypassed gatekeepers without seizing cultural power over taste #qualifies (0.75)
• Journalism’s truth-falsehood distinction directly opposes platforms’ radical indifference to content #expands (0.70) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1610