The new gatekeepers in digital democracy---the A list or leading bloggers. They---the influential few---are the hubs of opinion-making about the ongoing revolution in media.
Jon Garfunkel at Civitas says:
"The old gatekeepers (media) and the new gatekeepers [bloggers] are not the same. Both, after all, influence what we watch and read. The difference is that the old gatekeepers do so by restricting information. The new gatekeepers do so by manipulating information cascades."
Not really. That opinion making within the gated community is just a particular conversation on a public stage. Other people come together in other parts of the stgte to discuss common affairs, interact with one another and lay themselves open to the judgement of others.
It is the public realm, the space within which the civil conversation about public things, that is important, not the gatekeeping.