Hyperlinking as Gatekeeping: online newspaper coverage of the execution of an American terrorist

The Journalistic Hyperlink

“…Links allow "browsing through reports, archives dating back years and years, official documents and full transcript of interviews and statements" (Deuze, 1999, p. 383). They thus allow the reader to understand an issue in depth (Dimitrova et al, 2003). In short, they support facticity, which is desirable if we assume that the process of sourcing defines journalism (Tsui, 2008, p. 71).…”

“…links leading to other websites, as opposed to internal links leading to pages in the same site). For example, Dimitrova et al (2003) examined links stemming from 473 news stories gathered on 15 U.S. websites: only 4,1% of them were external links. In another study, Dimitrova and Neznanski (2006) assessed 791 home pages of 26 online newspapers from 17 countries.…”

Audience Gatekeeping in the Twitter Service: An Investigation of Tweets about the 2009 Gaza Conflict

“…Dimitrova, et al (2003) argued that hyperlinking to other webpages is a part of gatekeeping that influences readers' information choice. While their study is based solely on professional journalism sites, their discussion is expandable to social news sites in which users' hyperlinking influences other users' information choices.…”

Online Journalism in Southern East Europe

“…Studies in this field demonstrated that limited numbers of online news sites are using external hyperlinks. Links to external sites are also often used if the site is non-competitive (Dimitrova et al, 2003;Oblak, 2005). Absence of external hyperlinks' popularity means, owners of the sites thinking that users may move away from tasks associated with the possibility of generating profits for the web site; or may not come back from another site and reduce the site's advertising revenue and users (Cohen, 2002).…”