For nearly sixty years, scholars have studied how information is selected, vetted, and shared by news organizations. The process, known as gatekeeping, is an enduring mass communications theory that describes the process by which news is gathered and filtered to audiences. It has been suggested, however, that in the wake of online communications the traditional function of media gatekeeping is changing. The infusion of citizen-gathered media into news programming is resulting in what some call a paradigm shift. As mainstream news outlets adopt and encourage public participation, it is important that researchers have a greater understanding of the theoretical implications related to participatory media and gatekeeping. This study will be among the first to examine the adoption of citizen journalism by a major cable news network. It will focus on CNN's citizen journalism online news community called iReport, which allows the public to share and submit "unfiltered" content. Vetted submissions that are deemed newsworthy can then be broadcasted across CNN's networks, and published on CNN.com. This journalism practice appears to follow the thoughts of Nguyen (2006), who states that, "future journalists will need to be trained to not only become critical gate-keepers but also act as listeners, discussion and forum leaders/mediators in an intimate interaction with their audiences." The goal of the paper is to lay a foundation for understanding how participatory media is utilized by a news network to help researchers possibly develop new models and hypotheses related to gatekeeping theory.

Diploma thesis The history of music journalism from the year 1963 until now examines the development of domestic music journalism from the year 1963 to the present in three crucial periods. The first period starts by the year 1963 because at this time the first professional music magazine Melodie in the Czechoslovak socialism republic developed. The second period that I study in my thesis was the 1990s, right after the Velvet Revolution, when many new music magazines were established, led by the magazine Rock & Pop. The third period I study in my thesis are the times after the year 2000 which are characterized by the development of online music journalism and by diminishing role of printed music magazines. In the theoretical part, I briefly describe every period by key historical characteristics and I also describe theirs dominant music magazines. In the last section, where I focus on the present time and the world of Internet, I focus also on the online music journalism as a new crucial field of the 21 century which fundamentally changed the work of music journalists. In the analytical part, I choose important music journalists for each period whose work is linked to the period, and with whom I conducted the interviews. The research method is qualitative research conducted in the form of semi-structured...

The diploma thesis describes the application of theoretical concepts of journalism into the environemnt of two most popular music websites Musicserver and iREPORT. In the theoretical basis for the topic are featured the basic characteristics of online journalism and the problematic nature of the term "ideal critic". Furthermore, there are at first theoretically established and afterwards analyzed the concepts of agenda-setting, gatekeeping, objectivity and bias, participative journalism, user generatec content, professionalism, hypertextuality and intertextuality, the usage of social networks, tabloidization and the analysis will also touch upon the issue of name transformation to fit the Czech language. There is also a semiotic and visual analysis of chosen samples performed. On the basis of concepts, the paper intends to explain the functioning of the websites, the aspects that are influencing their content, the factors that have an effect on the selection of the content, the means of working with the audience, the problems in terms of objectivity in the art criticism, the requirements laid upon the editorial staff members and the level of influence upon the readers. Keywords online journalism, theoretical concepts, Musicserver, iREPORT, music, agenda-setting, gatekeeping, objectivity,...