The Human in Human Information Transfer – The Wider Implications of Gatekeeping

As humans inescapably embraced by social networks, we exhibit a fundamental reliance on interpersonal relations for the acquisition of information. Gatekeepers, who help link people with unknown information, are the “humans” in this interpersonal information transfer web. This paper pulls together ideas from diverse disciplinary research literatures to provide a synthetic view of the gatekeeping process. It reveals that gatekeepers arise in social groups by different means, as noted and verified by empirical research, are cultural certification, informal nominations and by virtue of social positions. Constituting key elements of our information environment, gatekeepers are very influential in that they help to define social reality in our mind and affect decisions we make. However, while relying and trusting our gatekeepers, we still need to be aware of the biases and information gaps gatekeepers could possibly have presented. More importantly, gatekeeping research helps reveal the information transfer mechanism through social networks and prompts us to social network analysis which can further promote our understanding of human information behavior as reflections of social relations, and the perennial issue of information inequity.