PRÓBA WYPRACOWANIA METODOLOGII POMIARU BANIEK FILTRUJĄCYCH W WYSZUKIWARCE GOOGLE
AN ATTEMPT TO DEVELOP A METHODOLOGY OF MEASURING FILTER BUBBLES IN GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE

Summary/Abstract: The authors proposed a method of quantitative measurement of the phenomenon of filter bubbles in Google search engine. Firstly, he topic was taken up because of the lack of such a method in the academic world and the proposal of a competitor to Google, DuckDuckGo. Secondly, because of the social consequences of the phenomenon of filter bubbles raised by activists and researchers. The aim was to test the used methodology of quantitative measurement of the phenomenon of information bubbles and to refine it. A pilot survey was conducted on a homogeneous group in an experimental scheme. It consisted in comparing sets of search results (SSR) in the normal mode of a web browser, logged into a Google account with SSR in the private (incognito) mode logged out of that account. One political search term was used – “Paweł Adamowicz”. The SSR was treated as a sequence of characters, a string, and compared in two web browser’s modes using the optimal string alignment distance method. The open sourced data and code allow readers to trace and reproduce the analyses made. The results do not indicate that the differences in the SSR are influenced neither by the world view in terms of liberalism/conservatism nor by the attitude to control the privacy of the Internet user. The influence was noted for the degree of personalization of the SSR in the normal web browser mode.

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