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use of the individuals or organizations as news sources. Credibility also affects the
potential news sources-journalists relations, and these two factors therefore have a role in
the gate-keeping process.
Lacy’s (1989) revised Westley-MacLean model is considerably improved for
several reasons. First, it differentiated among the news workers—reporters, news editors
and managers—and identified the group dynamics within an organization. The usually
ignored interactions among those roles are important because their inter-relations can
affect not only their personal relations but also their executions of organizational goals,
set mostly by news managers. More important, it suggested implicitly that news sources
who can directly observe events can also become gatekeepers within the whole
communication processes.
Lewin’s Gate-keeping Model
Lewin (1947, 1951) claimed that it is essential to understand the psychological
factors of the gatekeeper who controls the channels. He delineated those determinants
into three primary dimensions: gatekeepers’ cognitive structure, their motivations, and
conflicts. Within the first dimension are food judgment criteria for individuals (i.e.,
physical availability and cultural availability), food judgment criteria for family (i.e.,
preference of husband or children), meal patterns (i.e., balanced meals), and the meaning
of eating situation (i.e., group eating ideology vs. individual eating ideology). Included in
the motivation dimension are values behind food selection (i.e., expense, health, taste and
status), food needs (i.e., satisfaction of foods), and obstacles to be overcome (i.e., time
constraint for food cooking). Conflict is a result of two or more opposite forces working
Convention