“Foreign beauties want to meet you”: The sexualization of women in Google’s organic and sponsored text search results

Abstract

Search engines serve as information gatekeepers on a multitude of topics dealing with different aspects of society. However, the ways search engines filter and rank information are prone to biases related to gender, ethnicity, and race. In this article, we conduct a systematic algorithm audit to examine how one specific form of bias, namely, sexualization, is manifested in Google’s text search results about different national and gender groups. We find evidence of the sexualization of women, particularly those from the Global South and East, in search outputs in both organic and sponsored search results. Our findings contribute to research on the sexualization of people in different forms of media, bias in web search, and algorithm auditing as well as have important implications for the ongoing debates about the responsibility of transnational tech companies for preventing systems they design from amplifying discrimination.

Shall androids dream of genocides? How generative AI can change the future of memorialization of mass atrocities

“…Existing research shows that the exact ways in which non-generative AI can malperform vary from non-systematic errors (e.g., search engines retrieving irrelevant or factually incorrect information [59]) to systematic bias resulting in a skewed representation of social reality [109,110]. Researchers have also demonstrated the potential of non-generative AI systems to reiterate and amplify stereotypes, in particular in relation to discriminated gender and racial groups [110][111][112][113][114].…”

The user is dead, long live the platform? Problematising the user-centric focus of (digital) memory studies

“…Thus, achieving an in-depth understanding of the role of memory infrastructures is crucial for developing more critical perspectives on the relationship between digital technology and remembrance, for instance, informed by postcolonial (Keightley, 2022) and political economy studies (Reading, 2014), in particular considering the growing concerns about the differentiated – and often discriminatory – treatment of certain individuals and groups by the online platforms in the context other than remembrance (e.g. Cahn et al, 2019; Noble, 2018; Urman and Makhortykh, 2022).…”