ABSTRACT
The concepts of gatekeeping and agenda-setting had limited news value at the time they were introduced more formally within journalism studies. Maxwell McCombs and D. L. Shaw also pay academic homage to thoughts and texts by colleagues. The concept of gatekeeping seems to have been used to encompass an increased variety of different principles and practices in journalism, and when one reviews the literature about gatekeeping and agenda-setting and relates these works to contemporary journalism, three models stand out. The first is based on a process of information, the second on communication, and the third on elimination. The three models can hardly capture all the complexities of the transition that journalism is going through—and the varied ways in which gatekeeping and agenda-setting take place in a digital era. The original agenda-setting study has been met by similar criticism about its failure to grasp the complexities in terms of the function and effects of the news media.
