Googling the Big Lie: Search Engines, News Media, and the US 2020 Election Conspiracy

TL;DR

This study examines how major search engines differ in presenting news about the US 2020 election conspiracy, revealing that Google tends to provide thorough debunks, while others sometimes support or fail to counter the conspiracy, influenced by query type and location.

Contribution

It provides a large-scale algorithm audit comparing search engine responses across locations and queries, highlighting differences in conspiracy debunking and support.

Findings

Google offers thorough debunks and alternative explanations.

DuckDuckGo and Bing sometimes support or fail to debunk the conspiracy.

Support for conspiracy is driven by broad, ideology-agnostic queries.

Abstract

The conspiracy theory that the US 2020 presidential election was fraudulent - the Big Lie - remained a prominent part of the media agenda months after the election. Whether and how search engines prioritized news stories that sought to thoroughly debunk the claims, provide a simple negation, or support the conspiracy is crucial for understanding information exposure on the topic. We investigate how search engines provided news on this conspiracy by conducting a large-scale algorithm audit evaluating differences between three search engines (Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing), across three locations (Ohio, California, and the UK), and using eleven search queries. Results show that simply denying the conspiracy is the largest debunking strategy across all search engines. While Google has a strong mainstreaming effect on articles explicitly focused on the Big Lie - providing thorough debunks and alternative explanations - DuckDuckGo and Bing display, depending on the location, a large share of articles either supporting the conspiracy or failing to debunk it. Lastly, we find that niche ideologically driven search queries (e.g., "sharpie marker ballots Arizona") do not lead to more conspiracy-supportive material. Instead, content supporting the conspiracy is largely a product of broader ideology-agnostic search queries (e.g., "voter fraud 2020").