Search engines and the order of knowledge: Cultural perspectives on search engines in society

Search engines for the web are a fundamental tool in people's everyday lives. The way search engines rank search results is critical to the ordering of knowledge in society and is in a constant state of change. The potential responsibility of search engines to not spread conspiracy theories, disinformation, and extremism, and how to balance that potential responsibility with the task of providing people who are searching for information with the information they actually want, is a balancing act. Studying how this balance manifests itself and how it is motivated is an important research task that this project undertakes. How search engines deal with this balancing act also presents a conflict area for broader societal discussions about how digital platforms moderate content. The aim of the project is to gain in-depth insights into (1) how the tension between individual desires and societal interests shapes search engines' principles for ranking search results, and (2) how these trade-offs may relate to conflicts over the control of information in society. The objective is achieved through two interrelated sub-studies. Substudy 1 (Search Engine Priorities) examines how a selection of search engines prioritizes information and the potential impact of these priorities within a given topic area. Substudy 2 (Search Engines in the Public Sphere) examines the area of conflict regarding the control of information in society that is evident in the arguments for and in the public debate about search engine ranking.