Developing robust methods for the measurement of online social media populations

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

In June 2016, troubling evidence surfaced showing Google’s search engine to be “racist.” At issue were the radically different images returned by the search terms “three white teenagers” and “three black teenagers.” The former search returned wholesome pictures of teenagers playing sports and hanging out. The latter returned mugshots. Google defended the search results, indicating that their search algorithms were informed by web content and the frequency with which it was accessed and linked. Google - the company that runs software used daily by millions of people to find information on the internet - asserted that any such bias in their search results were “fundamentally a societal problem.”