Examining exposure diversity on Google News in Australia

Abstract

This article presents results from a sub-project established under the
banner of the ADM+S Australian Search Experience ‘citizen science’
research project. The aim was to characterise news recommendations
presented to Australians through Google News. The project investigated
the search results for 20 keywords related to Australian politics and global
issues, including names of politicians, political parties, global sporting
events and various COVID-related terms. Keywords were organised into
two keyword sets: ‘Australian Politics’ and ‘Global Issues’. The
researchers found that Google News search results were not personalised
with respect to demographics or geography. A small subset of domains
dominated the first page of results. While several major Australian news
domains were regularly observed for the ‘Australian Politics’ keyword set,
the ‘Global Issues’ category featured more news domains from the United
States and the United Kingdom. These findings help to better understand
how search engines present news content to ordinary internet users.