Manipulation of search threatens democracy

Its users "they need to rethink what Google is and how it returns information to them," warns an Assistant Professor (Francesca Bolla Tripodi) in the School of Library and Information Science at UNC-Chapel Hill:

google democracies

In a new book titled The Propagandists' Playbook, warns that simple results s are full of links have been converted by "Google's desire to answer our questions for us, rather than requiring us to click on results".

The problem, of course, begins when Google returns inaccurate answers "which often disrupt democratic participation, confirm unfounded claims, and are easily manipulated by people who want to spread lies."

By adding all these features, Google – as well as competitors DuckDuckGo and Bing, which also aggregate content – ​​has fundamentally changed the experience from an exploratory search environment to a platform designed to serve up information, replacing a process that allows learning and exploring content in search results.

The problem is that more and more of them to find information on very complex topics. “As my research reveals, this shift can lead to misinformation... Worse, when like this, there is no mechanism by which users can observe discrepancies or can flag results as a kind of evaluation of results”.

The problem is that many users still use Google to verify information, and doing so can amplify false claims. This is not only because Google sometimes provides misleading or incorrect information, but also because the people I spoke to for my research believed that Google's first search results are the "most important", "most relevant" and "more expensive". They even stated that they "trusted Google more than the news" because they considered it to be a more objective source.

This leads to what I refer to in my book, The Propagandists' Playbook, as the “IKEA disinformation effect”.

Business scientists have found that when consumers assemble their own furniture, they value the product more than a pre-assembled item of similar quality — they feel more competent and therefore happier with their purchase.

Conspiracy theorists and propagandists rely on the same strategy, providing a palpable, "homemade" quality to the information they provide.

"Instead of assuming that early results validate the truth, we need to apply research and control."

"Just because information comes from a search engine doesn't make it reliable."

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democracy, google, google search, search results, iguru

Written by giorgos

George still wonders what he's doing here ...

One Comment

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  1. In short let's go to an internet DICTATORSHIP…..
    The world trusts the internet more because the media has proven many times that they MANIPULATE and DO NOT PRESENT THE TRUTH... and especially in the last years of PLANDIMIA, the manipulation and PETSOMA with many millions of euros from the media became obvious...

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