{"id":2098,"date":"2016-10-17T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T08:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicseastasia.com\/staging\/3558\/?p=2098"},"modified":"2016-10-16T15:15:44","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T13:15:44","slug":"chinas-search-engines-interfaces-algorithms-manage-access-digital-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicseastasia.com\/staging\/3558\/studying\/chinas-search-engines-interfaces-algorithms-manage-access-digital-china\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s Search Engines – How Do Interfaces and Algorithms Manage Access to Digital China?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Discussion with Students at Leiden University<\/h2>\n

For the vast majority of internet users, access to the web takes place either through social media platforms like Facebook or through search engines like Google. In fact, these two platforms have become so powerful in mediating our online experience that Goodman and Powles<\/a> go as far as to argue in the Guardian that these\u00a0are no longer our media. We have become their media.<\/p>\n

Google has indeed become the premier household name for querying the web, with a market share that \u2018is already a rounding error from 100%\u2019 in most countries (Edelman 2011: 32). Its search engine has become so ubiquitous, write K\u00f6nig and Rasch, that it appears old, unsexy, and unremarkable. Users take search engines for granted, when really \u2018the bland surface and hidden complexity\u2019 should \u2018evoke important questions about the problem of their lack of transparency\u2019 (2014: 12).<\/p>\n

In China, Google has been blocked since the company left the mainland search engine market<\/a> in 2010. Officially, Google\u2019s move was officially fuelled by ethical concerns over censorship and hacking in China, though business considerations<\/a> are likely to have played a major role in the decision. Cracking China\u2019s search engine market is a challenge, not just because of state intervention: between the largest search enterprise Baidu <\/a>and the smaller competitors 360<\/a>\u00a0and Search Dog<\/a>, digital China is fairly saturated with search engine offers. And yet recent controversies have raised questions about the biases and business practices of these enterprises (cf. Jiang 2014), specifically about the way in which Baidu guides users to paid content \u2013 at times with disastrous results<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As part of our Leiden University seminar on the politics of digital China, I have asked our graduate students to discuss the role that\u00a0search engines play in shaping user behaviour, especially in the case of the PRC internet. How important are China\u2019s search engines as entry-points into the web? What are their biases? Are these biases mostly economic or political, or a combination of both? And what can the Chinese case tell us about the way that search algorithms generally structure knowledge?<\/p>\n

References<\/h3>\n

Edelman, Benjamin (2011), \u2018Bias in Search Results? Diagnosis and Response\u2019. The Indian Journal of Law and Technology<\/em>, 7, 16-32.<\/p>\n

Jiang, Min (2014), \u2018The Business and Politics of Search Engines: A Comparative Study of Baidu and Google\u2019s Search Results of Internet Events in China\u2019. New Media & Society<\/em>, 16(2), 212-233.<\/p>\n

K\u00f6nig, Ren\u00e9 & Rasch, Miriam (eds) (2014), Society of the Query Reader \u2013 Reflections on Web Search<\/a><\/em>. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this discussion, our graduate students at Leiden University take a look at China’s search engines and their role as knowledge filters in the PRC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,46],"tags":[187,186,43,62,109,188,185],"class_list":["post-2098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-nationalism","category-studying","tag-187","tag-baidu","tag-china","tag-digital-media","tag-internet","tag-search-dog","tag-search-engine","post_format-post-format-image"],"yoast_head":"\nChina's Search Engines - How Do Interfaces and Algorithms Manage Access to Digital China? - Politics East Asia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.politicseastasia.com\/staging\/3558\/studying\/chinas-search-engines-interfaces-algorithms-manage-access-digital-china\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China's Search Engines - How Do Interfaces and Algorithms Manage Access to Digital China? 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