ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how web analytics and their social actors have become part of journalism. It argues that as journalism exists in an era of constant transformation, technological institutions such as web analytics companies have changed the nature of journalism and threatened the public nature of the journalism in exchange for clicks and market-driven norms. While responses to web analytics varies among organizations, they have affected the gatekeeping process on multiple levels of analysis: from the routines, individual, organizational, institutional, to system levels. It is thus crucial that scholars and practitioners recognize web analytics as both a technological tool and disruption affecting journalism practice and gatekeeping at all levels of analysis.
