Where the Earth is flat and 9/11 is an inside job: A comparative
algorithm audit of conspiratorial information in web search results
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01278v2
- Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2021 11:16:16 GMT
- Title: Where the Earth is flat and 9/11 is an inside job: A comparative
algorithm audit of conspiratorial information in web search results
- Authors: Aleksandra Urman, Mykola Makhortykh, Roberto Ulloa, Juhi Kulshrestha
- Abstract summary: We examine the distribution of conspiratorial information in search results across five search engines: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Yandex.
We find that all search engines except Google consistently displayed conspiracy-promoting results and returned links to conspiracy-dedicated websites in their top results.
Most conspiracy-promoting results came from social media and conspiracy-dedicated websites while conspiracy-debunking information was shared by scientific websites and, to a lesser extent, legacy media.
- Score: 62.997667081978825
- License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Abstract: Web search engines are important online information intermediaries that are
frequently used and highly trusted by the public despite multiple evidence of
their outputs being subjected to inaccuracies and biases. One form of such
inaccuracy, which so far received little scholarly attention, is the presence
of conspiratorial information, namely pages promoting conspiracy theories. We
address this gap by conducting a comparative algorithm audit to examine the
distribution of conspiratorial information in search results across five search
engines: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Yandex. Using a virtual
agent-based infrastructure, we systematically collect search outputs for six
conspiracy theory-related queries (flat earth, new world order, qanon, 9/11,
illuminati, george soros) across three locations (two in the US and one in the
UK) and two observation periods (March and May 2021). We find that all search
engines except Google consistently displayed conspiracy-promoting results and
returned links to conspiracy-dedicated websites in their top results, although
the share of such content varied across queries. Most conspiracy-promoting
results came from social media and conspiracy-dedicated websites while
conspiracy-debunking information was shared by scientific websites and, to a
lesser extent, legacy media. The fact that these observations are consistent
across different locations and time periods highlight the possibility of some
search engines systematically prioritizing conspiracy-promoting content and,
thus, amplifying their distribution in the online environments.
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