Egalitarians at the gate: One-sided gatekeeping practices in social media

Brian Keegan*, Darren Gergle

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

27 Scopus citations

Abstract

Although Wikipedia has increasingly attracted attention for its in-depth and timely coverage of breaking news stories, the social dynamics of how Wikipedia editors process breaking news items has not been systematically examined. Through a 3-month study of 161 deliberations over whether a news item should appear on Wikipedia's front page, we demonstrate that elite users fulfill a unique gatekeeping role that permits them to leverage their community position to block the promotion of inappropriate items. However, these elite users are unable to promote their supported news items more effectively than other types of editors. These findings suggest that "one-sided gatekeeping" may reflect a crucial stasis in social media where the community has to balance the experience of its elite users while encouraging contributions from non-elite users.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW 2010
Pages131-134
Number of pages4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010
Event2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW 2010 - Savannah, GA, United States
Duration: Feb 6 2010Feb 10 2010

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW

Other

Other2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW 2010
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySavannah, GA
Period2/6/102/10/10

Keywords

  • Collaboration
  • Decision-making
  • Deliberation
  • Gatekeeping
  • Social computing
  • Wiki
  • Wikipedia

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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