FOREVER BLOWING UP BUBBLES:

People routinely put their faith in Google to find out about central political issues and decide who to vote for. Often, they search on political topics to validate or question news from other sources. They believe Google is giving them unbiased and accurate results, weighing facts instead of rank-ordering results that match the entered keywords. But they're wrong: Google doesn't weigh political bias; it weighs factors such as what words appear in the article or headline, how many people link to it, and what words people used in their search.

Whether the reader comes back and clicks on other links from the same search results also affects results. If more people click on the third link than the first or second, Google's algorithm will shift accordingly. Google's results are thus a kind of instant poll of public opinion about which news the public believes is most worthy of attention. That is not to say that this instant poll isn't problematic; it's simply indicative of the broader social structures that shape what we think we know about the world.

Phrasing matters. Take, for example, two very similar searches surrounding an advertisement paid for by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group funded by the Koch brothers. The ad that repeatedly aired on television and Facebook argued that the Democratic candidate for governor (Ralph Northam) was incompetent because he had "approved the spending of $1.4 million in taxpayer money to a fake Chinese company with a false address and a phony website."

My research demonstrates that Google can actually drive the public toward a silo of conservative thought.

If you Googled "Northam fake Chinese company" on January 25, 2018, you were provided articles from the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Washington Post that summarized the claims in the ad. But those more interested in fiscal responsibility might have focused on the monetary figure repeatedly used in the Republican candidate's ads and rallies.

By simply adding "$1.4 million" to the search on the same day, Google returned dramatically different, conservative-leaning content. The top result was an opinion piece by the Republican Governors Association; the second link was an op-ed by a conservative politician. A few hits down was a direct link to the organization that paid for the ad, and following that was a link to Fairfax Underground -- a forum that frequently claims the Democratic Party is trying to "break the back of white, middle-class America" by "importing millions of brown people to dilute white votes and remove Christianity from the public square."

If anything, this search leans conservative and verges on racist misinformation, burying liberal perspectives.

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