Do Web search engines suppress controversy?

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 16:50:58 -0500
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From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>

Do Web search engines suppress controversy?

by Susan L. Gerhart

Abstract

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-known controversy
revealed in a simple search? 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.

Contents

Understanding Web behavior: Politics, technology and users
Why does visibility of controversy matter?
Case studies of controversial topics
Summary of case studies: How much is controversy suppressed?
Limits of the experiments
Explanations for controversy revealing/suppression
General explanations
Toward a more objective Web
A simulated objective Web
Conclusions


...

http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_1/gerhart/ 

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