Generative AI as a Gatekeeper: Uncovering Affordance-Based Gatekeeping Mechanisms in Media Ecosystems

Gatekeeping in the media industry has historically been exercised primarily by publishers and editorial actors but increasingly shifted toward platform companies and their algorithmic infrastructures with the rise of digital platforms. The affordances of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), however, introduce new points of control across the full media value chain, challenging this assumption. This paper examines how GenAI reshapes gatekeeping across the media value chain through a qualitative multiple-case study of seven European publishers based on a data collection in 2024. Our analysis identifies five GenAI-induced, affordance-driven gatekeeping mechanisms spanning along the media value chain. Collectively, these mechanisms produce a redistribution of power among publishers, AI providers, and audiences, in which publishers cede control upstream to infrastructure providers and downstream to users. We argue that GenAI constitutes a systemic structuring force that redefines not only where gatekeeping occurs, but also how media work is organized around provision, generation, and interaction. In doing so, it fundamentally alters how value is created and captured across the media value chain.