Paramita, M.L., Orphanou, K., Christoforou, E. et al. (2 more authors) (2021) Do you see what I see? Images of the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of Google. Information Processing & Management, 58 (5). 102654. ISSN 0306-4573
Abstract
During times of crisis, information access is crucial. Given the opaque processes behind modern search engines, it is important to understand the extent to which the “picture” of the Covid-19 pandemic accessed by users differs. We explore variations in what users “see” concerning the pandemic through Google image search, using a two-step approach. First, we crowdsource a search task to users in four regions of Europe, asking them to help us create a photo documentary of Covid-19 by providing image search queries. Analysing the queries, we find five common themes describing information needs. Next, we study three sources of variation - users’ information needs, their geo-locations and query languages - and analyse their influences on the similarity of results. We find that users see the pandemic differently depending on where they live, as evidenced by the 46% similarity across results. When users expressed a given query in different languages, there was no overlap for most of the results. Our analysis suggests that localisation plays a major role in the (dis)similarity of results, and provides evidence of the diverse “picture” of the pandemic seen through Google.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Authors. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Images; Information diversity; Pandemic information; Proprietary search |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Information School (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number European Commission - HORIZON 2020 810105 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 17 Jun 2021 06:54 |
Last Modified: | 21 Feb 2022 14:37 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102654 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:175126 |