لخّصلي

Social responsibility in the study of journalism ethics is a specific concept referring to the need for
media organizations to be responsible for the possible repercussions of the news they produce. The
debate goes on even as more and more platforms for mass communication are developed.
Beyond advancements in ink-on-paper newspapers (including the development of color offset
printing), technological developments have contributed to the diversification of mass media products.
Photography evolved throughout the 20th century as did motion picture film, radio and television
technology. Other mass media presented challenges and competition for newspapers. Still, newspapers
were quite a profitable business. They grew to their greatest readership levels in the middle-to-late
20th century, and their value was at its high point around the turn of the 21st century. Then came the
internet.
Stewing in our Own Juices
With the rise of global computer networks, particularly high-speed broadband and mobile
communication technologies, individuals gained the ability to publish their own work and to
comment on mass media messages more easily than ever before. If mass communication in the 20th
century was best characterized as a one-to-many system where publishers and broadcasters reached
waiting audiences, the mass media made possible by digital information networks in the twenty-first
have taken on a many-to-many format.
For example, YouTube has millions of producers who themselves are also consumers. None of the
social media giants such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Qzone and Weibo (in China), Twitter,
Reddit or Pinterest is primarily known for producing content. Instead, they provide platforms for
users to submit their own content and to share what mass media news and entertainment companies
produce. The result is that the process of deciding what people should be interested in is much more

decentralized in the digital network mass media environment than it was in the days of an analog one-
to-many mass media system.

The process of making meaning in society — that is, the process of telling many smaller stories that add
up to a narrative shared by mass audiences — is now much more collaborative than it was in the 20th
century because more people are consuming news in networked platforms than through the channels
managed by gatekeepers. A mass media gatekeeper is someone, professional or not, who decides what
information to share with mass audiences and what information to leave out.
Fiction or non-fiction, every story leaves something out, and the same is true for shows made up of
several stories, such as news broadcasts and heavily edited reality television. Gatekeepers select what
mass audiences see, and then edit or disregard the rest. The power of gatekeepers may be diminished
in networks where people can decide for themselves what topics they care most about, but there is
still an important gatekeeping function in the mass media since much of what is ultimately shared on
social media platforms originates in the offices and studios of major media corporations.