The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and its possible impact on the outcomes of elections

By Robert Epstein, Ronald E. Robertson. 2015

528 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Information Systems, Sociology and Political Science

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In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Glimmers: Resolving the Privacy/Trust Quagmire (2017, positive): “Such attacks are not of marginal import and should be taken seriously: changing the order of predictions might skew thought processes, as has been shown for search-rank manipulation affecting election results [5].”
Fair Personalization (2017, background): “candidates can be manipulated by biasing rankings of search results [7].”
Countering Misinformation and Fake News Through Inoculation and Prebunking (2021, background): “…Figure 6A-C)2 Given that many elections are decided on small margins (e.g., half of U.S. presidential elections were decided by margins under 7.6% (Epstein & Robertson, 2015) and the 2016 election was decided by razor-thin margins in a few swing states), these effects can be considered…”
Auditing Search Engines for Differential Satisfaction Across Demographics (2017, background): “Other related studies measured the impact of demographics on search results [23], examined the search engine manipulation effect [15], explored demographic context as a means to improve search results for ambiguous queries, and analyzed gender differences in search perceptions [45].”
Quantifying Search Bias: Investigating Sources of Bias for Political Searches in Social Media (2017, background): “While Weber et al [43] inferred political leanings of search queries by linking the queries with political blogs, Epstein and Robertson [8] studied how bias in search rankings can inﬂuence people’s candidate selection in elections.”
Regulatory Mechanisms and Algorithms towards Trust in AI / ML (2017, background): “For example, it has been hypothesized that increasingly polarized content in search results and online feeds such as Facebook and Twitter can lead to increasingly polarized opinions and behavior [Epstein and Robertson, 2015].”
Should We Worry About Filter Bubbles (2016, unknown): “In another study, the effects appeared to be stronger: Epstein and Robertson (2015) claim that differences in Google search results can shift voting preferences of undecided voters by 20%.”
Investigating User Perception of Gender Bias in Image Search: The Role of Sexism (2018, background): “In the case of search, these processes also influence users’ view of the information landscape and highly ranked results can shape public opinion [6, 11].”