Related papers: Data Voids and Warning Banners on Google Search
Search engines are used and trusted by hundreds of millions of people every day. However, the algorithms used by search engines to index, filter, and rank web content are inherently biased, and will necessarily prefer some views and…
Search query suggestions affect users' interactions with search engines, which then influences the information they encounter. Thus, bias in search query suggestions can lead to exposure to biased search results and can impact opinion…
The 2020 US elections news coverage was extensive, with new pieces of information generated rapidly. This evolving scenario presented an opportunity to study the performance of search engines in a context in which they had to quickly…
Researchers rely on academic Web search engines to find scientific sources, but search engine mechanisms may selectively present content that aligns with biases embedded in queries. This study examines whether confirmation biased queries…
Social media have quickly become a prevalent channel to access information, spread ideas, and influence opinions. However, it has been suggested that social and algorithmic filtering may cause exposure to less diverse points of view, and…
The prevalence of state-sponsored propaganda on the Internet has become a cause for concern in the recent years. While much effort has been made to identify state-sponsored Internet propaganda, the problem remains far from being solved…
With the 2022 US midterm elections approaching, conspiratorial claims about the 2020 presidential elections continue to threaten users' trust in the electoral process. To regulate election misinformation, YouTube introduced policies to…
Modern content platforms offer paid promotion to mitigate cold start by allocating exposure via auctions. Our empirical analysis reveals a counterintuitive flaw in this paradigm: while promotion rescues low-to-medium quality content, it can…
A growing number of empirical studies suggest that negative advertising is effective in campaigning, while the mechanisms are rarely mentioned. With the scandal of Cambridge Analytica and Russian intervention behind the Brexit and the 2016…
Past research shows that users benefit from systems that support them in their writing and exploration tasks. The autosuggestion feature of Web search engines is an example of such a system: It helps users in formulating their queries by…
Online platforms have transformed the way in which individuals access and interact with news, with a high degree of trust particularly placed in search engine results. We use web tracked behavioral data across a 2-month period and analyze…
To partly address people's concerns over web tracking, Google has created the Ad Settings webpage to provide information about and some choice over the profiles Google creates on users. We present AdFisher, an automated tool that explores…
Search engines decide what we see for a given search query. Since many people are exposed to information through search engines, it is fair to expect that search engines are neutral. However, search engine results do not necessarily cover…
The enforcement of the GDPR led to the widespread adoption of consent notices, colloquially known as cookie banners. Studies have shown that many website operators do not comply with the law and track users prior to any interaction with the…
Recently, light has been shed on the trend of personalization, which comes into play whenever different search results are being tailored for a group of users who have issued the same search query. The unpalatable fact that myriads of…
The limited information (data voids) on political topics relevant to underrepresented communities has facilitated the spread of disinformation. Independent journalists who combat disinformation in underrepresented communities have reported…
In recent years, the opaque design and the limited public understanding of social networks' recommendation algorithms have raised concerns about potential manipulation of information exposure. Reducing content visibility, aka shadow…
The 2024 U.S. Presidential Election unfolded within an information environment of unprecedented volatility, challenging citizens to navigate a torrent of rapidly evolving, often contradictory information while determining what to believe.…
In this research, we explored the efficacy of various warning label designs for AI-generated content on social media platforms e.g., deepfakes. We devised and assessed ten distinct label design samples that varied across the dimensions of…
This report analyzes the Google search results from more than 1,500 volunteer data donors who, in the five weeks leading up to the federal election on September 24th, 2017, automatically searched Google for 16 predefined names of political…