Title: Search engines in polarized media environment: Auditing political information curation on Google and Bing prior to 2024 US elections Show Chinese title

Title: 极化媒体环境中的搜索引擎：2024年美国总统选举前对谷歌和必应上政治信息整理的审计

Abstract: Search engines play an important role in the context of modern elections. By curating information in response to user queries, search engines influence how individuals are informed about election-related developments and perceive the media environment in which elections take place. It has particular implications for (perceived) polarization, especially if search engines' curation results in a skewed treatment of information sources based on their political leaning. Until now, however, it is unclear whether such a partisan gap emerges through information curation on search engines and what user- and system-side factors affect it. To address this shortcoming, we audit the two largest Western search engines, Google and Bing, prior to the 2024 US presidential elections and examine how these search engines' organic search results and additional interface elements represent election-related information depending on the queries' slant, user location, and time when the search was conducted. Our findings indicate that both search engines tend to prioritize left-leaning media sources, with the exact scope of search results' ideological slant varying between Democrat- and Republican-focused queries. We also observe limited effects of location- and time-based factors on organic search results, whereas results for additional interface elements were more volatile over time and specific US states. Together, our observations highlight that search engines' information curation actively mirrors the partisan divides present in the US media environments and has the potential to contribute to (perceived) polarization within these environments. Show Chinese abstract

Abstract: 搜索引擎在现代选举的背景下扮演着重要角色。 通过根据用户查询整理信息，搜索引擎影响个人如何了解与选举相关的进展，并如何看待选举所处的媒体环境。 这对（感知到的）极化有特别的影响，尤其是当搜索引擎的整理导致基于政治倾向的信息来源偏斜处理时。 然而到目前为止，尚不清楚这种党派差距是否通过搜索引擎的信息整理出现，以及哪些用户层面和系统层面的因素会影响它。 为解决这一不足，我们在2024年美国总统选举前审计了两大西方搜索引擎Google和Bing，并研究了这些搜索引擎的自然搜索结果和额外界面元素如何根据查询的倾向、用户位置和搜索时间来呈现与选举相关的信息。 我们的研究结果表明，这两个搜索引擎倾向于优先选择左翼媒体来源，而搜索结果的思想倾向范围在针对民主党与共和党的查询之间有所不同。 我们还观察到位置和时间因素对自然搜索结果的影响有限，而额外界面元素的结果则随时间变化更大，并且在特定美国州之间存在差异。 总的来说，我们的观察表明，搜索引擎的信息整理积极反映了美国媒体环境中存在的党派分歧，并有可能加剧这些环境中的（感知到的）极化。