Gatekeeping in the digital era. Is it necessary?

Academic Paper from the year 2013 in the subject Communications - Mass Media, , language: English, abstract: The focus of this work is to evaluate the opinion of members of the Facebook Community forum on the Fact Checking policy of Facebook. The specific objective for this study is expressed in the questions thus: what is the level of acceptability of the Facebook Fact Checking policy and is it necessary in this era of freedom of expression and opinion? The media survey research design was used for this study. The study selected the users who responded to Mark Zuckerberg¿s update on introducing Facebook Fact Checking Policy as the population for the study. Hence, the population size was 12,280. Using the Taro Yamane formula for determining sample size, the selected sample from the population for the study was approximately 400.

In December 2016 through a post by its Chief Executive officer Facebook declared it will be introducing a fact checker policy to guide against misinformation on the platform. This declaration has been accompanied with various reactions by members of the forum. While some accept the policy, the others frown at it for various reasons. In the libertarian theory of the mass media, freedom of expression and opinion are held in high esteem. Libertarian theory or the Free Press theory is one of the normative theories of mass communication where media or press is given absolute freedom to publish anything at any time and acts as a watchdog. The theory came from the libertarian thoughts of Europe during the 16th century after the invention of printing press and after the press movement. It was advocated by many renowned personalities like Lao Tzu, John Locke, John Milton, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson et cetera. In a complete example of the theory, it is expected that the masses and the media are granted the right to make comments or criticize the policies without any government interference. It also prevents the growing effect of corruption by making government as much transparent as possible and keeping people aware of their works.