Do Web search engines suppress controversy?
by Susan L. Gerhart
Web behavior depends upon three interlocking communities: (1) authors
whose Web pages link to other pages; (2) search engines indexing and
ranking those pages; and (3) information seekers whose queries and
surfing reward authors and support search engines. Systematic
suppression of controversial topics would indicate a flaw in the Web's
ideology of openness and informativeness. This paper explores search
engines' bias by asking: Is a specific well? Experimental topics
include: distance learning, Albert Einstein, St. John's Wort, female
astronauts, and Belize. The experiments suggest simple queries tend to
overly present the "sunny side" of these topics, with minimal
controversy. A more "Objective Web" is analyzed where: (a) Web page
authors adopt research citation practices; (b) search engines balance
organizational and analytic content; and, (c) searchers practice more
wary multi-searching.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_1/gerhart/index.html
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