The goals of this study are to explore several claims about the democratizing potential of the internet and to extend gatekeeping theory into user-generated content (UGC) domain. A quantitative content analysis of the most popular YouTube political news videos during the 2008 US presidential election was conducted to investigate the degree to which nonelites were able to partake in mainstream public discourse. We found that elites dominated first and second filters (news sourcing and news production) in the flow of online news, while nonelites dominated the third filter (news distribution). These results suggest that an update to the traditional gatekeeping model is needed to reflect the realities of today’s user-driven communication environment.

This 2 × 2 experimental study (N = 196) tested the effects of source expertise and opinion valence in readers’ comments on the credibility of an online news story about genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Source expertise had a significant influence on perceptions of article credibility; articles were judged more credible when public comments embedded in the story were from expert sources (e.g., scientists) rather than nonexpert sources (e.g., Twitter users). Effects were larger on high-frequency news users, regardless of whether comments were for or against GMOs. Results suggest that Internet users mainly use the peripheral or heuristic route of information processing to evaluate online news credibility. The importance for online journalism of social heuristics via opinions of other people is discussed.

This experimental study (N = 113) examined the effects of the visual presentations of data in television news on young Americans’ recall of information about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) as well as the roles of individual characteristics in this process. The results show that individuals who saw either a tabular or graphical presentation of information about STDs better remembered that information than those who only heard the anchor describe the numbers. Our study further found that participants high in quantitative media literacy recalled significantly more information than participants low in quantitative media literacy, but this individual characteristic did not moderate the relationship between style of information presentation and recall. The results support the assumptions of Limited Capacity Model of mediated message processing. It also represents the first step in linking individual differences to the processing of information from infographics from television news.