{"id":21980,"date":"2015-08-13T05:30:17","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T09:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=21980"},"modified":"2015-08-13T10:11:39","modified_gmt":"2015-08-13T14:11:39","slug":"could-google-steal-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/08\/could-google-steal-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Google steal the election?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Research shows that whether favorable or unfavorable articles show up on search engines\u2013and the order of those articles\u2013influences the way people vote.\u00a0 So, conceivably, Google\u2013or, rather, the search algorithm that Google uses\u2013could determine the election.\u00a0 So warns Wired Magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

From Adam Rogers, Google\u2019s Search Algorithm Could Steal the Presidency | WIRED<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Imagine an election\u2014a close one. You\u2019re undecided. So you type the name of one of the candidates into your search engine of choice. (Actually, let\u2019s not be coy here. In most of the world, one search engine dominates; in Europe and North America, it\u2019s Google.) And Google coughs up, in fractions of a second, articles and facts about that candidate. Great! Now you are an informed voter, right? But a study published this week says that the order of those results, the ranking of positive or negative stories on the screen, can have an enormous influence on the way you vote. And if the election is close enough, the effect could be profound enough to change the outcome.<\/p>\n

\n

In other words: Google\u2019s ranking algorithm for search results could accidentally steal the presidency. \u201cWe estimate, based on win margins in national elections around the world,\u201d says Robert Epstein, a psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and one of the study\u2019s authors, \u201cthat Google could determine the outcome of upwards of 25 percent of all national elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Epstein\u2019s paper combines a few years\u2019 worth of experiments in which Epstein and his colleague Ronald Robertson gave people access to information about the race for prime minister in Australia in 2010, two years prior, and then let the mock-voters learn about the candidates via a simulated search engine that displayed real articles.<\/p>\n

One group saw positive articles about one candidate first; the other saw positive articles about the other candidate. (A control group saw a random assortment.) The result: Whichever side people saw the positive results for, they were more likely to vote for\u2014by more than 48 percent. The team calls that number the \u201cvote manipulation power,\u201d or VMP. The effect held\u2014strengthened, even\u2014when the researchers swapped in a single negative story into the number-four and number-three spots. Apparently it made the results seem even more neutral and therefore more trustworthy.<\/p>\n

But of course that was all artificial\u2014in the lab. So the researchers packed up and went to India in advance of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, a national campaign with 800 million eligible voters. (Eventually 430 million people voted over the weeks of the actual election.) \u201cI thought this time we\u2019d be lucky if we got 2 or 3 percent, and my gut said we\u2019re gonna get nothing,\u201d Epstein says, \u201cbecause this is an intense, intense election environment.\u201d Voters get exposed, heavily, to lots of other information besides a mock search engine result.<\/p>\n

The team 2,150 found undecided voters and performed a version of the same experiment. And again, VMP was off the charts. Even taking into account some sloppiness in the data-gathering and a tougher time assessing articles for their positive or negative valence, they got an overall VMP of 24 percent. \u201cIn some demographic groups in India we had as high as about 72 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that media, including whatever search and social deliver, can affect decision-making isn\u2019t exactly news. The \u201cFox News Effect\u201d says that towns that got the conservative-leaning cable channel tended to become more conservative in their voting in the 2000 election. A well-known effect called recency means that people make decisions based on the last thing they heard. Placement on a list also has a known effect. And all that stuff might be too transient to make it all the way to a voting booth, or get swamped by exposure to other media. So in real life VMP is probably much less pronounced.<\/p>\n

But the effect doesn\u2019t have to be enormous to have an enormous effect. The Australian election that Epstein and Robertson used in their experiments came down to a margin of less than 1 percent. Half the presidential elections in US history came down to a margin of less than 8 percent. And presidential elections are really 50 separate state-by-state knife fights, with the focus of campaigns not on poll-tested winners or losers but purple \u201cswing states\u201d with razor-thin margins.<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . . ]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research shows that whether favorable or unfavorable articles show up on search engines\u2013and the order of those articles\u2013influences the way people vote.\u00a0 So, conceivably, Google\u2013or, rather, the search algorithm that Google uses\u2013could determine the election.\u00a0 So warns Wired Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,44],"tags":[740,938,3975,3974],"class_list":["post-21980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-technology","tag-elections","tag-google","tag-political-information","tag-search-engines"],"yoast_head":"\nCould Google steal the election?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Research shows that whether favorable or unfavorable articles show up on search engines--and the order of those articles--influences the way people 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