A story of (non)compliance, bias, and conspiracies: How Google and Yandex represented Smart Voting during the 2021 parliamentary elections in Russia-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

A story of (non)compliance, bias, and conspiracies: How Google and Yandex represented Smart Voting during the 2021 parliamentary elections in Russia

Published:2022-03-07 Issue: Volume: Page:
ISSN:
Container-title:Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review
language:
Short-container-title:HKS Misinfo Review

Author:

Makhortykh Mykola¹,Urman Aleksandra²,Wijermars Mariëlle³

Affiliation:

1. Institute of Communication and Media Studies, University of Bern, Switzerland

2. Social Computing Group, University of Zurich, Switzerland

3. Department of Political Science, Maastricht University, Netherlands

Abstract

On 3 September 2021, the Russian court forbade Google and Yandex to display search results for “Smart Voting,” the query referring to a tactical voting project by the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. To examine whether the two search engines complied with the court order, we collected top search outputs for the query from Google and Yandex. Our analysis demonstrates the lack of compliance from both engines; however, while Google continued prioritizing outputs related to the opposition’s web resources, Yandex removed links to them and, in some cases, promoted conspiratorial claims aligning with the Russian authorities’ anti-Western narrative.

Publisher

Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy

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