Google News serves conservatives and liberals similar results, but favours mainstream media
3 months agoRather than contributing to the sort of "Echo chamber" problem that critics fear have plagued Facebook and other social media networks, our research has found that Google News algorithms recommended virtually identical news sources to both liberals and conservatives. Google search results for "Trump News" shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. We asked them to search Google News for news about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump while logged in to their personal Google accounts, and report the first five stories they were recommended on each candidate. We expected to find people getting different article recommendations based on their prior search history and online activity, as recorded by Google and applied to the results they got from Google News. First, Google News search results do favour legacy news organisations, ones with a long history. For people who care that public discourse is based on a shared set of facts, it's good news to learn that most people get the same results when they search Google News. Across the political spectrum, Americans have far more trust in their local media than in the national media organisations that dominate online - including the results of Google News. Read more