Social and Political Framing in Search Engine Results

Abstract

Search engines play a crucial role in shaping public discourse by influencing how information is accessed and framed. While prior research has extensively examined various dimensions of search bias---such as content prioritization, indexical bias, political polarization, and sources of bias---an important question remains underexplored: how do search engines and ideologically-motivated user queries contribute to bias in search results. This study analyzes the outputs of major search engines using a dataset of politically and socially contentious topics. The findings reveal that search engines not only prioritize content in ways that reflect underlying biases but also that ideologically-driven user queries exacerbate these biases, resulting in the amplification of specific narratives. Moreover, significant differences were observed across search engines in terms of the sources they prioritize. These results suggest that search engines may play a pivotal role in shaping public perceptions by reinforcing ideological divides, thereby contributing to the broader issue of information polarization.