Everyone\u27s A Critic: Gatekeeping And Film Criticism In A Digital Age

Film criticism has changed dramatically with the advent of the internet. Historically viewed as gatekeepers, today’s critics now navigate authority and seek to position themselves as experts in a climate where amateur critics can create film criticism using a variety of digital tools, traditional platforms have disappeared, and websites such as Rotten Tomatoes provide access to aggregate scores that risk losing the individual critical perspectives in favor of consensus. This research observes a regional critics group in order to better understand the composition of criticism in a digital culture. It then observes Rotten Tomatoes and its role as a gatekeeper and then studies box office rankings, critics scores and audience scores to determine whether there is a disparity in reviews between critics and audiences