The Search Engine as Object of Study: An Interview with Richard Rogers
The Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies Research Theme, “In Search of Search and its Engines: New perspectives on the impact of search in culture and everyday life” (ISOS), unites researchers with diverse disciplinary backgrounds to explore the intersection between search, search engines, and search-adjacent recommender systems and media and information literacies. We invited Richard Rogers, professor of New Media & Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam to present an overview of research on search engines. In his talk, Rogers discussed how search engines — and especially Google — have evolved since the late 1990s, and how research on search has evolved along with it — from critical discourse on ranking epistemology, including “Googlearchy” and “relevance” critique, to personalization (and the end of universal results), to the revenge of geography and national jurisdiction, when Google would send the user “home” by default. A common line of investigation has been Google’s preferred placement (“Google’s top search result? Surprise! It’s Google”). Google has not escaped algorithmic auditing or machine bias studies, given the scholarly emphasis on discriminatory and racist results, or misinformation studies, or discussions of the potential anti-conservative bias of “big tech”. Rogers’ presentation focused on the evolution of Google critique, and included early empirical work on algorithmic auditing and recent approaches to the study of misinformation and political bias. He agreed to a short interview with us.
Cristian Norocel (CN): In your presentation you raised the issue of “presentist” search engines. Could you unpack the concept in relation to the continuous search engine optimization of Google? In this regard, what are the opportunities or constraints that such a “presentist” aspect posits to scholars? And in direct relation to that, does it provide limitations to research into “Google studies” as well as “societal search”, as you call these two research avenues in your work (Rogers 2019)?
Richard Rogers (RR): Google quite famously “learned” from the 9/11 attacks (Wiggins 2001) that when people query search engines for current events (e.g., “World Trade Center”) they expect current information in return, rather than a lesson in architectural history or the views from the top-floor restaurant. That experience set Google on the path of “presentism” in its results, otherwise known as privileging “freshness”. In a form of algorithmic auditing (or the study of Google), one can critique the effects of presentism on the quality of information returned. One also can make use of Google’s freshness privileging when repurposing it as a research machine in order to study how recent changes in an organization’s website show their new interests, such as when a new U.S. Presidential administration arrives and edits the social issues list on whitehouse.gov.
CN: In your work, you discuss Google’s dominance across the world as a sign of Americanization (Rogers 2018) — what comes to mind is the “GAFA” appellation (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), which crystallized in the French context — and I wonder if you see this as an assumed process on behalf of Google (thus actively partaking in said Americanization) or simply a byproduct of Google’s dominance of the market? Is then the Googlization of the internet the apex of Americanization in late capitalist societies?
RR: Google, like McDonald’s in years past, has a globalization strategy that rests on “glocalization”, i.e., by seemingly serving the needs of the local (“Google in your own language”) at the same time it dominates globally (Google’s international market dominance). Whilst connotating globalization (and in some sense globalization as Americanization), Googlization refers mainly to how Google introduces its business model (‘free’) and thereby takes over industries. To me the term marks the end of “new media” and reminds us how Google has become a new form of mass media.
CN: And since we are here, I would like to discuss further this aspect of Googlization as mass media critique you well point out (Rogers 2018). Can we consider Google a new mass-media medium instead of it being a simple search engine?
RR: Mass media most recently refers to a form of television that seeks to maximize its audience (with a “broad appeal” quality level), and has high barriers of entry for any competitors, given the infrastructure needed to compete against it. When one considers Google as mass media, one should renew the mass media definition in at least two senses. One is how Google increasingly furnishes as its top results Google’s own properties. The second is that we see a new form of media concentration that I call “algorithmic concentration”, meaning that leading search engines all have a similar (personalization) formula as their answer to the question of relevance, just as leading television networks have similar formulas for the “morning show” or the “evening news”.
CN: There is also another aspect I wish to discuss. You problematize in your research (Rogers 2018; 2019) the effect Google has on the variety of search results, which may be indicative of the diversity of “voices” that are being “heard”. For example, the right-wing populist and extreme right actors have constantly complained that their “voice” has been drowned out in the search results. How would you comment on this call for more “diversity of voices” in search engine results, in light of recent events, such as the explosion of conspiracy theories about Covid-19 and the vaccine against it, or the storming of the US Capitol?
RR: Google and other search engines have never been in the business of providing “balanced” results, and as such have always had a non-journalistic approach. As far as I know, they never really considered providing both sides of any information query. In the early years, they relied on matching query with document, and later they introduced personalization, first in a geographical sense, and later in other senses. Nowadays, however, search engines and social media are caught up in the populist critique against elite and mainstream media and are being scrutinized as “voice-giving” media, rather than as informational media or social media. If I were to provide an expectation it could be that Google further accentuates personalization so that people receive the results they want, also politically, despite the fact that it would open itself to the critique of further polarization.
CN: I would like you to develop succinctly the concept of “alt-tech” that you argue is a reaction to the aforementioned “progressive bias” of Google and other tech giants. In your opinion, what are the far-reaching consequences of such development?
RR: “Alt-tech” is the alternative to a “Big Tech” that moderates content and deplatforms those who repeatedly break platform rules. It is an ecology that consists of more than alternatives to mainstream social media, such as Gab (to Twitter), Bitchute (to YouTube), Minds (to Facebook) and so forth, but also is comprised of alternative web hosts, web infrastructure, payment processing, merchandise sites and other elements of a digital economy. In that sense, it could be conceived of as an alternative Internet that breaks society in two. It challenges the new mass media (big tech), but it also may slowly mainstream as it addresses societal demands for greater content moderation as well as calls for features that grow fan bases and afford alt-influencers means to earn revenue.
CN: Many thanks for lending your time for this interview!
RR: My pleasure!
Richard Rogers is professor of New Media & Digital Culture, Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is director of the Digital Methods Initiative, which is known for the development of software tools for the study of online data. Rogers has authored Information Politics on the Web (MIT Press, 2004), awarded best information science book of the year by the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST), and Digital Methods (MIT Press, 2013), awarded outstanding book of the year by the International Communication Association (ICA). His most recent books are Doing Digital Methods (Sage, 2019) and the edited volume (with Sabine Niederer), The Politics of Social Media Manipulation (Amsterdam University Press, 2020).
