Manipulating PageRank – Manipulating Public Opinion
News Article: Google, democracy and the truth about internet search
Throughout lectures, we have heard that very simply put, search engines use page rank to determine which websites are the most reputable, trustworthy, or just more popular. This method makes sense as the system eventually reaches equilibrium and we wind up with a nice, clean ranking. But, it can all go wrong if someone decides to try and manipulate the system.
The article by Carole Cadwalladr shows how political groups can use knowledge of how Google’s PageRank algorithm works to manipulate top search results.
This graph from the article shows how one specific group (the round masses of black text) can link to many popular sites and each other to create a bias in search results. And it’s done on such a massive scale that it is very difficult to counteract.
Many other researchers have done work to explore the effect that top search results have on public opinion, and it has been found that there is a very strong effect. If one point of view takes over the first 2 pages of a Google search, then the other point of view will rarely be seen.
In the article, a professor from the London School of Economics explains that there are checks in place to make sure that specific media conglomerates are unable to influence search results, but what do we do in the event of a group of people taking over the search results?
Is this just a result of the majority selecting what they believe to be the best information? Or is it a small subset trying to takeover the information presented to the public? As far as Google is concerned, it doesn’t matter. The algorithm is supposed to be unbiased and only does what the formulas tell it to do.
But what’s next? With journalism being taken by storm on the internet, the top search results rule information propagation.