Auditing local news presence on Google News.

@article{Fischer2020AuditingLN,
  title={Auditing local news presence on Google News.},
  author={Sean Fischer and Kokil Jaidka and Yphtach Lelkes},
  journal={Nature human behaviour},
  year={2020}
}
Local news outlets have struggled to stay open in the more competitive market of digital media. Some have noted that this decline may be due to the ways in which digital platforms direct attention to some news outlets and not others. To test this theory, we collected 12.29 million responses to Google News searches within all US counties for a set of keywords. We compared the number of local outlets reported in the results against the number of national outlets. We find that, unless consumers… 
View on PubMed
doi.org
9 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
1
Background Citations
7

9 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Engagement Outweighs Exposure to Partisan and Unreliable News within Google Search
TLDR
Using surveys paired with engagement and exposure data collected around the 2018 and 2020 US elections, it is found that strong Republicans engaged with more partisan and unreliable news than strong Democrats did, despite the two groups being exposed to similar amounts of partisan and reliable news in their Google search results.
Errors in Geotargeted Display Advertising
TLDR
It is found that geotargeting errors are common, but minor in terms of advertising goals, and implications for advertisers, the business of local journalism, and future research are discussed.
More Accounts, Fewer Links
TLDR
Results show that algorithmic curation increases source diversity in terms of both Twitter accounts and external domains, even though it drastically decreases the number of external links in the timeline, and presents some evidence that the timeline algorithm may exacerbate partisan differences in exposure to different sources and topics.
Auditing the Information Quality of News-Related Queries on the Alexa Voice Assistant
TLDR
A methodological approach for evaluating information quality in voice assistants for news-related queries is developed, first characterising Alexa's performance in terms of response relevance, accuracy, and timeliness, and then further elaborating analyses of information quality based on query phrasing, news category, and information provenance.
More Accounts, Fewer Links: How Algorithmic Curation Impacts Media Exposure in Twitter Timelines
TLDR
Results show that algorithmic curation increases source diversity in terms of both Twitter accounts and external domains, even though it drastically decreases the number of external links in the timeline, and presents some evidence that the timeline algorithm may exacerbate partisan differences in exposure to different sources and topics.
Scaling up search engine audits: Practical insights for algorithm auditing
TLDR
It is concluded that virtual agents are a promising venue for monitoring the performance of algorithms across long periods of time, and it is hoped that this article can serve as a basis for further research in this area.
Algorithm Auditing at a Large-Scale: Insights from Search Engine Audits
TLDR
It is concluded that virtual agents are a promising venue for monitoring the performance of algorithms across long periods of time, and it is hoped that this paper can serve as a basis for further research in this area.
Problematic Machine Behavior
  • Jack Bandy
  • Business
    Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact.
  • 2021
TLDR
The review shows how previous audit studies have exposed public-facing algorithms exhibiting problematic behavior, such as search algorithms culpable of distortion and advertising algorithms culpables of discrimination, and suggests some behaviors (e.g. Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn) that call for future audit attention.
Problematic Machine Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review of Algorithm Audits
TLDR
The review shows how previous audit studies have exposed public-facing algorithms exhibiting problematic behavior, such as search algorithms culpable of distortion and advertising algorithms culpables of discrimination, and suggests some behaviors (e.g. Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn) that call for future audit attention.

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 29 REFERENCES
What Do News Aggregators Do? Evidence from Google News in Spain and Germany
As Local News Goes, So Goes Citizen Engagement: Media, Knowledge, and Participation in US House Elections
We propose a two-stage process to explain the relationship between the local news environment and citizen engagement. Our original content analysis of newspaper coverage in every US House district…
Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook
TLDR
Examination of the news that millions of Facebook users' peers shared, what information these users were presented with, and what they ultimately consumed found that friends shared substantially less cross-cutting news from sources aligned with an opposing ideology.
The Decline of Local News and Its Effects: New Evidence from Longitudinal Data
We present the first longitudinal evidence that declining local political news coverage is reducing citizen engagement. Drawing on a content analysis of more than 10,000 stories about US House…
What kind of news gatekeepers do we want machines to be? Filter bubbles, fragmentation, and the normative dimensions of algorithmic recommendations
Newspaper Closures Polarize Voting Behavior
Changes to the media environment have increased polarized voting in America through both addition and subtraction. We argue that the decline of local newspapers has contributed to the nationalization…
Auditing Partisan Audience Bias within Google Search
TLDR
A mixed-methods algorithm audit of partisan audience bias and personalization within Google Search found that results positioned toward the bottom of Google SERPs were more left-leaning than results positioned towards the top, and that the direction and magnitude of overall lean varied by search query, component type, and other factors.
Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015
This year's report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 20,000 online news consumers in the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark,…
Search as News Curator: The Role of Google in Shaping Attention to News Information
TLDR
An algorithm audit of the Google Top Stories box is presented, indicating a considerable degree of source concentration, a slight exaggeration in the ideological skew of news in comparison to a baseline, and a quantification of how the presentation of items translates into traffic and attention for publishers.
Algorithmic inference, political interest, and exposure to news and politics on Facebook
TLDR
It is shown that algorithmic ‘sorting out’ of users has consequences for who is exposed to news and politics on Facebook, including people who are algorithmically categorized as interested in news or politics.
...
1
2
3
...