Flutterby™! : Search engine biases

Nature: How online misinformation exploits ‘information voids’ — and what to do about it, an article based on Nature: Online searches to evaluate misinformation can increase its perceived veracity Kevin Aslett, Zeve Sanderson, William Godel, Nathaniel Persily, Jonathan Nagler & Joshua A. Tucker

To shed light on this relationship, we combine survey data with digital trace data collected using a custom browser extension. We find that the search effect is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information. Our results indicate that those who search online to evaluate misinformation risk falling into data voids, or informational spaces in which there is corroborating evidence from low-quality sources. We also find consistent evidence that searching online to evaluate news increases belief in true news from low-quality sources, but inconsistent evidence that it increases belief in true news from mainstream sources. Our findings highlight the need for media literacy programmes to ground their recommendations in empirically tested strategies and for search engines to invest in solutions to the challenges identified here.

An example: If you hear about Bob Lazar, the UFO hoaxer, and search for "Zeta Reticuli" (the binary star system) and "Moscovium" (the element with atomic number 115), you'll get almost exclusively content backing up his story. And it's now old, but for a while if you used the phrase "sound science" in your searches, it would be biased towards deliberate petroleum producer content.