Abstract

This article reports on a study that contributes to the literature on gatekeeping, gatewatching and crowdsourcing in African contexts. It does so by significantly expanding the scope, and theoretically incorporating the value of information and message content, through which the study revealed how citizen journalists only participate in the already existing media agenda. Citizen journalists are not professional journalists, instead they transmit information using social media platforms. By analysing a total of 2 418 stories from social media users and conducting surveys among 314 journalists, the study was able to demonstrate that journalists and the political elites are the main creators of news media agenda. The findings also suggest that journalists do not crowdsource to obtain a diversity of opinions, but rather to validate their already made agenda. These findings, although consistent with the extant literature, present an important topic to the so far understudied area of Africa.

摘要

本文报告了一项研究，该研究对非洲背景下的看门、看门和众包文献做出了贡献。它通过显着扩大范围，并在理论上整合信息和消息内容的价值来实现这一点，研究揭示了公民记者如何只参与已经存在的媒体议程。公民记者不是专业记者，而是使用社交媒体平台传输信息。通过分析来自社交媒体用户的总共 2418 个故事并对 314 名记者进行调查，该研究能够证明记者和政治精英是新闻媒体议程的主要创造者。调查结果还表明，记者不会通过众包来获取多样化的意见，而是验证他们已经制定的议程。这些发现虽然与现有文献一致，但为迄今为止尚未得到充分研究的非洲地区提供了一个重要的主题。