Changing Roles of Gatekeepers in the Era of New Media: A Study of Gatekeeping on Instagram

Social Media, being the part of New Media is the emerging and vitally used platform for sharing and consuming information. Because of its massive reach and accessibility, the number of users on Social Media is increasing rapidly. Social Media platforms are free and allow every user to share the content freely. With the increasing Smart phone users, now users from anywhere can capture the images and videos and share the same on Social Media. Any information once uploaded online spreads widely making it difficult to stop its spread and even to monitor it. Users freely share their opinion and the content supporting their ideology and philosophy. The New Media platforms encourage users generated information and citizen journalism as users also share the newsworthy information. There is an absence of Gatekeepers on the Social Media which leads to sharing unedited content on these platforms. Being unaware of the Media Ethics users also share fake News, misinformation, disinformation, sensitive and malign content. This conceptual paper studies the importance of Gatekeepers for the Social Media platform. It examines the impact of unedited newsworthy information shared by user and drives to the conclusion and discussion.