Invisible Search and Online Search Engines

" Invisible Search and Online Search Engines considers the use of search engines in contemporary everyday life and the challenges this poses for media and information literacy. Looking for mediated information is mostly done online and arbitrated by the various tools and devices that people carry with them on a daily basis. Because of this, search engines have a significant impact on the structure of our lives, and personal and public memories. Haider and Sundin consider what this means for society, whilst also uniting research on information retrieval with research on how people actually look for and encounter information. Search engines are now one of society’s key infrastructures for knowing and becoming informed. While their use is dispersed across myriads of social practices, where they have acquired close to naturalised positions, they are commercially and technically centralised. Arguing that search, searching, and search engines have become so widely used that we have stopped noticing them, Haider and Sundin consider what it means to be so reliant on this all-encompassing and increasingly invisible information infrastructure. Invisible Search and Online Search Engines is the first book to approach search and search engines from a perspective that combines insights from the technical expertise of information science research with a social science and humanities approach. As such, the book should be essential reading for academics, researchers, and students working on and studying information science, library and information science (LIS), media studies, journalism, digital cultures, and educational sciences.

Algorithmic neutrality, algorithmic assemblages, and the lifeworld

The paper explores the role of algorithms in the constitution of the social world. Concepts drawn from the perspectives of social phenomenology and information systems are used to argue that algorithms are sociomaterial constructions that, as part of algorithmic assemblages, have become embedded in the lifeworld of people who routinely use digital devices in their online lives. The paper argues that as these assemblages become more deeply embedded in the social fabric, there is pressing need for critical analysis because of the power and information asymmetries that are uncovered when considering the roles of the complex organizations that control the algorithmic assemblages that increasingly shape people’s digital lives

Everyday life as an evolving context of information behaviour

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the nature of everyday life as a context of information behaviour by examining how researchers have approached this issue. To this end, particular attention is directed to how they have characterized everyday life as a constellation of work-related and non-work constituents. Evolutionary concept analysis was conducted by focusing on 40 studies on the topic. It is examined how the conceptualizations of everyday life and the relationships between work-related and non-work constituents have been evolved since the 1990s. The analysis is based on the comparison of the similarities and differences between the characterizations of the above constituents. Early conceptualizations of everyday life as a context of information behaviour were largely based on Savolainen's model for everyday life information seeking. Later studies have proposed a more holistic approach to everyday life in times when the boundaries between work-related and free-time activities have become blurred, due to the growing use of networked information technologies and telecommuting. Since the late 1990s, the understanding about the nature of everyday life as a context of information behaviour has become more nuanced; thanks to a more detailed identification of the overlaps of work-related and non-work constituents. As the study is based on a sample of studies examining the relationships of work-related and non-work constituents, the findings cannot be generalized to concern the contextual nature of everyday life as a whole. The study pioneers by offering an in-depth analysis of the nature of everyday life as a context of information behaviour.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Performing search : Search Engines and Mobile Devices in the Everyday Life of Young People

I denna avhandling undersöks sökmotorers och mobila redskaps betydelse i unga människors vardagsliv. Studien har genomförts i en svensk kontext med deltagare i åldern 13–16 år. Avhandlingen tar avstamp i den utbreddatillgången till sökmotorer vilken möjliggörs genom smarta mobiler, laptops, surfplattor och datorer. Detta scenario innebär att det är möjligt att söka information om nästan vadsomhelst, närsomhelst och varsomhelst. Att användasökmotorer har kommit att bli en del av vardagen i dagens samhälle. Avhandlingen är en sammanläggningsavhandling som består av fyra artiklar. För att uppnå syftet med avhandlingen så utforskas sökning, mobilaredskap och sökmotorer från olika perspektiv i de fyra artiklarna. Följande forskningsfrågor formuleras i avhandlingen:1. Hur genomförs sökning på internet i skolan, och hur legitimerasaktiviteten i en skolkontext?2. Vilka inramningar går att identifiera i relation till hur tonåringarbeskriver samt använder Google Sök?3. Hur blir unga människor medvetna om spåren efter sina sökningarpå internet, samt vilka strategier har de för att hantera spåren, omnågra?4. Vilka inramningar av den smarta mobilen går att identifiera utifrånsättet som redskapet används och beskrivs av unga människor, samthur relaterar dessa inramningar till sökning på internet?Genom dessa infallsvinklar så undersöks i avhandlingen både sättet som unga människor använder sökmotorer i sin vardag, samt hur de förhåller sig till normer gällande användningen av sökmotorer och mobila redskap i olika sociala kontexter. Sammantaget så visar resultaten på den viktiga roll som sökning spelar i unga människors vardag. Avhandlingen visar på att unga människor inte använder mobila redskap slumpmässigt eller ogenomtänkt. Iställetframträder en medvetenhet om normer som präglar olika sociala kontexter. Samtidigt pekar resultaten på hur osynliggjort sökning är i vardagen vilket medföljer att aktiviteten inte alltid reflekteras över. Det går därmed attidentifiera en spänning i materialet mellan en medvetenhet om social kontext och ett förgivettagande av sökning i vardagen. Detta förgivettagande underbyggs även av sättet som vuxenvärlden, lärare och föräldrar, använder sig av sökmotorer och mobila redskap i vardagen. Resultaten bör därför betraktas i ljuset av ett samhället präglat av en användning av sökmotorer för att hitta information. Bland deltagarna i studien så associeras användningen av Google Sök med skola och faktaletande, till skillnad från andra former av sökning, så som via YouTube. Olika former av sökning överlappar dock, vilket framkommer i avhandlingen. Resultaten pekar på ett behov av att synliggöra och problematisera användningen av sökmotorer i vardagen

Google Search and the creation of ignorance: The case of the climate crisis

The article examines the relationship between commercial search engines, using Google Search as an example, and various forms of ignorance related to climate change. It draws on concepts from the field of agnotology to explore how environmental ignorances, and specifically related to the climate crisis, are shaped at the intersection of the logics of Google Search, everyday life and civil society/politics. Ignorance refers to a multi-facetted understanding of the culturally contingent ways in which something may not be known. Two research questions are addressed: How are environmental ignorances, and in particular related to the climate crisis, shaped at the intersection of the logics of Google Search, everyday life and civil society/politics? In what ways can we conceptualise Google's role as configured into the creation of ignorances? The argument is made through four vignettes, each of which explores and illustrates how Google Search is configured into a different kind of socially produced ignorance: (1) Ignorance through information avoidance: climate anxiety; (2) Ignorance through selective choice: gaming search terms; (3) Ignorance by design: algorithmically embodied emissions; (4) Ignorance through query suggestions: directing people to data voids. The article shows that while Google Search and its underlying algorithmic and commercial logic pre-figure these ignorances, they are also co-created and co-maintained by content producers, users and other human and non-human actors, as Google Search has become integral of social practices and ideas about them. The conclusion draws attention to a new logic of ignorance that is emerging in conjunction with a new knowledge logic

Service design for information searching

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Reaching into the basket of doom: Learning outcomes, discourse, and information literacy

Learning outcomes form a type of arrangement that holds the practice of information literacy within higher education in place. This paper employs the theory of practice architectures and a discourse analytical approach to examine the learning goals of five recent English-language models of information literacy. Analysis suggests that the practice of information literacy within higher education is composed of 12 common dimensions, which can be grouped into two categories, Mapping and Applying. The Mapping category encompasses learning outcomes that introduce the learner to accepted ways of knowing or what is valued by and how things work within higher education. The Applying category encompasses learning outcomes that encourage the learner to implement or integrate ideas into their own practice, including to their own questions, to themselves or to their experience. Revealing what is prioritised as well as what is less valued within the field at the present time, these findings also raise questions about supposed epistemological differences between models, the influence of research, and the language employed within these documents. This paper represents the third and final piece of work in a research programme that is interrogating the epistemological premises and discourses of information literacy within higher education

Is anybody in there?: Towards a model of affect and trust in human – AI information interactions

Advancements in search engines that utilize machine learning increase the likelihood that users will perceive these systems as worthy of trust. The nature and implications of trust in the context of algorithmic systems that utilize machine learning is examined and the resulting conception of trust is modelled. While current artificial intelligence does not meet the requirements of moral autonomy necessary to be considered trustworthy, people may still engage in misplaced trust based on the perception of moral autonomy. Users who place their trust in algorithmic systems limit their critical engagement with, and assessment of, the information interaction. A preliminary high-level model of trust’s role in information interactions adapting Ingwersen and Jarvelin’s Integrative Model for Interactive Information Seeking and Retrieval is proposed using the Google search engine as an example. We need to recognize that is it possible for users to react to information systems in a social manner that may lead to the formation of trust attitudes. As information professionals we want to develop interventions that will encourage users to stay critically engaged with their interactions with information systems, even when they perceive them to be autonomous.Peer Reviewe

Google, data voids, and the dynamics of the politics of exclusion

This study deploys a critical approach to big data analytics to gauge the tentative contours of data voids in Google searches that reflect extreme-right dynamics of exclusion in the aftermath of the 2015 humanitarian crisis in Europe. The study adds complexity to the analysis of data voids, expanding the framework of investigation outside the USA context by concentrating on Germany and Sweden. Building on previous big data analytics addressing the politics of exclusion, the study proposes a catalogue of queries concerning the issue of migration in both Germany and Sweden on a continuum from mainstream to extreme-right vocabularies. This catalogue of queries enables specific and localized queriesto identify data voids. The results show that a search engine's reliance on source popularity may lead to extreme-right sources appearing in top positions. Furthermore, using platforms for user-generated content provides a way for localized queries to gain top positions