Do Inaccurate Search Results Disrupt Democracies?

Users of Google "must recalibrate their thinking on what Google is and how information is returned to them," warns an Assistant Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-Chapel Hill.

In a new book called The Propagandists' Playbook, they warn that simple link-filled search results have been changed by "Google's latest desire to answer our questions for us, rather than requiring us to click on the returns" When they return inaccurate answers that disrupt democratic participation, confirm unsubstantiated claims, and are easy to spread falsehoods, the trouble begins. By adding all of these features, as well as competitors such as DuckDuckGo and Bing, which also summarize content, has effectively changed the experience from an explorative search environment to a platform designed around verification. Many people rely on search engines to find more complicated information. My research shows that this shift can cause incorrect returns. Users who notice discrepancies can't flag errors for review. Many users still rely on Google to fact-check information, and doing so might make them believe in false claims. People I spoke with for my research believed that the top search returns were more important than the news and they trusted them more than the news. I refer to this as the "IKEA effect of misinformation" in my book. Business scholars have found that when consumers build their own products, they feel more competent and happier with their purchase, because they value the product more than an already assembled item. The same strategy is being used by conspiracy theorists and propagandists to give a do-it-yourself quality to their information. Independently conducting a search on a given topic makes audiences feel like they are engaged in an act of self-discovery when they are actually participating in a scavenger hunt engineered by those spreading the lies. We need to apply the same scrutiny to information on social media that we have done to returns.

Another problem the article points out: "Googling the exact same phrase that you see on Twitter will likely return the same information you saw on Twitter. "Just because it's from a search engine doesn't make it more reliable."