审计谷歌与必应搜索,发现其结果偏左,加剧选举信息极化。
Search engines in polarized media environment: Auditing political information curation on Google and Bing prior to 2024 US elections
- 对比民主/共和聚焦查询,搜索结果更倾向左翼媒体
- 左倾媒体在结果中占比显著更高,政治倾向随查询类型变化
- 界面附加元素易受时间和地区影响,适合关注算法公平性的研究者
搜索引擎在现代选举中扮演关键角色,通过响应用户查询来影响人们对选举信息的获取和对媒体环境的认知,尤其可能加剧(感知中的)极化。若搜索引擎基于媒体政治倾向对信息源进行偏倚处理,则问题尤为突出。然而,目前尚不清楚这种党派差距是否存在于搜索引擎的信息筛选中,以及用户或系统层面因素如何影响这一现象。为此,我们对2024年美国大选前两大西方搜索引擎——谷歌与必应进行了审计,分析其自然搜索结果及附加界面元素如何随查询倾向、用户所在位置和搜索时间而变化。结果显示,两个引擎均倾向于优先展示左翼媒体来源,且具体意识形态倾向随查询的民主党或共和党焦点而异。地理位置和时间对自然结果的影响较小,但附加元素的结果波动更大,尤其在特定美国州份和时间段内表现明显。总体而言,搜索引擎的信息筛选机制反映了美国媒体环境中的党派分歧,具有加剧(感知)极化的潜在风险。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Search engines play an important role in the context of modern elections. By curating information in response to user queries, search engines influence how individuals are informed about election-related developments and perceive the media environment in which elections take place. It has particular implications for (perceived) polarization, especially if search engines' curation results in a skewed treatment of information sources based on their political leaning. Until now, however, it is unclear whether such a partisan gap emerges through information curation on search engines and what user- and system-side factors affect it. To address this shortcoming, we audit the two largest Western search engines, Google and Bing, prior to the 2024 US presidential elections and examine how these search engines' organic search results and additional interface elements represent election-related information depending on the queries' slant, user location, and time when the search was conducted. Our findings indicate that both search engines tend to prioritize left-leaning media sources, with the exact scope of search results' ideological slant varying between Democrat- and Republican-focused queries. We also observe limited effects of location- and time-based factors on organic search results, whereas results for additional interface elements were more volatile over time and specific US states. Together, our observations highlight that search engines' information curation actively mirrors the partisan divides present in the US media environments and has the potential to contribute to (perceived) polarization within these environments.
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