Gatekeeping Human Rights News Coverage in the Social System Across Nations.

While once conceived for local and national contexts, gatekeeping theory has expanded to include transnational news organizations, and now emerging news sources such as NGO journalism efforts. Meanwhile, the importance of covering human rights related issues has also increased in recent years, which often includes events that span across many borders. This study looks at how the social system influences the gatekeeping process of six traditional and three emerging transnational news organizations. A content analysis and in-depth interviews were conducted to measure power distance and individualism vs. collectivism. Results indicate both national cultural and journalistic norms influence the gatekeeping process. Overall, emerging news sources had lower power distance and higher collectivism. Whereas, Xinhua and Al Jazeera were not as collectivist as expected and all traditional sources were high in power distance. Positive sentiment was also higher for traditional sources, but Xinhua was the most positive of all coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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