Invisible Search and Online Search Engines: The Ubiquity of Search in Everyday Life

161 Pages·2019·2.842 MB·English

by  Jutta Haider, Olof Sundin

INVISIBLE SEARCH AND ONLINE
SEARCH ENGINES
InvisibleSearchandOnlineSearchEnginesconsiderstheuseofsearchenginesincontemporaryeverydaylife
andthechallengesthisposesformediaandinformationliteracy.Lookingformediatedinformationis
mostlydoneonlineandarbitratedbythevarioustoolsanddevicesthatpeoplecarrywiththemonadaily
basis.Becauseofthis,searchengineshaveasignificantimpactonthestructureofourlives,andpersonal
andpublicmemories.HaiderandSundinconsiderwhatthismeansforsociety,whilealsounitingresearch
oninformationretrievalwithresearchonhowpeopleactuallylookforandencounterinformation.
Search engines are now one of society’s key infrastructures for knowing and becoming
informed.Whiletheiruseisdispersedacrossmyriadsofsocialpractices,wheretheyhaveacquired
close to naturalised positions, they are commercially and technically centralised. Arguing that
search,searching,andsearchengineshavebecomesowidelyusedthatwehavestoppednoticing
them, Haider and Sundin consider what it means to be so reliant on this all-encompassing and
increasinglyinvisibleinformationinfrastructure.
InvisibleSearchandOnlineSearchEnginesisthefirstbooktoapproachsearchandsearchenginesfroma
perspectivethatcombinesinsightsfromthetechnicalexpertiseofinformationscienceresearchwitha
socialscienceandhumanitiesapproach.Assuch,thebookshouldbeessentialreadingforacademics,
researchers,andstudentsworkingonandstudyinginformationscience,libraryandinformationscience
(LIS),mediastudies,journalism,digitalcultures,andeducationalsciences.
JuttaHaiderisanAssociateProfessorinInformationStudiesattheDepartmentofArtsandCultural
Sciences,LundUniversity,Sweden.Shehaspublishedwidelyondigitalcultures’emergingconditionsfor
production,use,anddistributionofknowledgeandinformation.Thisincludesworkonenvironmental
informationandonknowledgeinstitutions,includingencyclopaedias,searchengines,andthescholarly
communicationsystem.
OlofSundinisProfessorinInformationStudiesattheDepartmentofArtsandCulturalSciences,Lund
University,Sweden.Hisworkconcernsmainlyinformationliteraciesandpracticesinvarioussettings.
Moreprecisely,heresearchestheconfigurationofinformationincontemporarysociety,theconstruction
oftrustworthinessofpublicknowledge,andinformationsearchinganduse.
“This is an excellent book that provides a unique perspective on the field of web
search studies. Jutta Haider and Olof Sundinplace search where it is best placed: in
everyday life. Search has become neither the sole activity of finding reliable infor-
mation on important topics nor just looking up facts or trivia but is used for both
purposesinterchangeably.Thisbook,whichiswell-groundedintheliteraturefrom
different fields, provides an excellent basis for understanding search as an integral
part of everyday life.”
Dirk Lewandowski, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany
“This is a marvelously written, beautifully researched volume which explores the
centrality of search to our lives. It ranges fluently across a number of fields to
produce fresh insights into topics such as the creation of new temporalities and
meaning-making in information infrastructures.”
Geoffrey Bowker, University of California Irvine, USA
“Search is probably the most important concept in library and information science
and is increasing, as demonstrated in the book, and is also studied by many other
disciplines, including media studies and science studies. The book does a great job
by presenting new knowledge of such an interdisciplinary nature. It is well known
that there are many perspectives (or ‘paradigms’) in these fields, and this book
advocates that search and search engines should be based in the perspective of
everydaylifeand practicestudies, and thereby itrepresentsan important new voice
in this extremely important field.”
Birger Hjørland, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
INVISIBLE SEARCH AND
ONLINE SEARCH
ENGINES
The Ubiquity of Search in
Everyday Life
Jutta Haider and Olof Sundin
Firstpublished2019
byRoutledge
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andbyRoutledge
52VanderbiltAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2019JuttaHaiderandOlofSundin
TherightofJuttaHaiderandOlofSundintobeidentifiedasauthorofthiswork
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Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintentto
infringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Haider,Jutta,author.|Sundin,Olof,author.
Title:Invisiblesearchandonlinesearchengines:theubiquityofsearchin
everydaylife/JuttaHaider,OlofSundin.
Description:MiltonPark,Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork:Routledge,2019.|
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2018052680(print)|LCCN2019000340(ebook)|
ISBN9780429448546(ebook)|ISBN9780429828010(epub)|
ISBN9780429828003(mobi/kindle)|ISBN9780429828027(webpdf)|ISBN
9781138328600(hardback:alk.paper)|
ISBN9781138328617(pbk.:alk.paper)
Subjects:LCSH:Internetsearching.|Websearchengines--Socialaspects.|
Informationbehavior.
Classification:LCCZA4230(ebook)|LCCZA4230.H352019(print)|
DDC025.0425--dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2018052680
ISBN:978-1-138-32860-0(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-138-32861-7(pbk)
ISBN:978-0-429-44854-6(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vi
1 Introduction 1
2 Perspectives on search 22
3 The materialities of search 49
4 Search in everyday life 76
5 Search and media and information literacy 100
6 Researching search and search as research 122
7 Conclusion 139
Index 146
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the result of years of research involving three projects that have been
carried out in collaboration with many people whose input we could not have
been without, but who at the same time cannot be blamed for anything written in
the book.
The book is primarily an outcome of the project “Knowledge in a Digital
World: Trust, Credibility & Relevance on the Web” (The Swedish Research
Council, 2012–05632). We would, therefore, first of all like to thank all our col-
leagues on this project. Particularly, we want to thank those colleagues who
worked together with us in carrying out the focus group discussions that we use as
illustrative examplesthroughout thebook:CeciliaAndersson, Hanna Carlsson, and
Sara Kjellberg. It has been a pleasure to work with you. Without our discussions
and written communications, this book would never been produced. Having said
that, weofcourse wouldalsoliketothankallparticipantsinourfocusgroupswho
generously shared their experiences of and ideas about searching in everyday life.
The inside knowledge of your daily routines has been crucial for our project. We
would also like to address a special thank you to Erik J. Olsson, who co-led the
project, and to his colleagues in the philosophy LUIQ research group. You have
provided us with many valuable comments that have challenged us to develop our
argumentation, at the same time as the uniqueness of our contribution from
information science/studies has become clearer. To some extent, the book also
relies on the findings from our projects “Open Data – The Materiality and Frag-
mentation of Facts” (Erik Philip Sörensen Foundation) as well as “Algorithms and
Literacies: Young People’s Understanding and Society's Expectations” (The
Swedish Research Council, 2017–03631).
Earlieranalysesofthefocusgroupdiscussionswedrawoninthebook,aswellas
other related work, have been published by us in the following publications:
“Invisible search: Information literacy in the Swedish Curriculum for Compulsory
Acknowledgments vii
Schools” in Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 2015, 10(4), 193–209; “Outsourcing
trust to the information infrastructure in schools: How search engines order
knowledgeineducationpractices”inJournalofDocumentation,2016,72(6),990–1007
(together with Hanna Carlsson); “The structuring of information through search:
Sorting waste with Google” in Aslib Journal of Information Management, 2016, 68(4),
390–406;“Searchingfordelegatedknowledgeinelementaryschools”inProceedings
of ISIC, the Information Behaviour Conference, Zadar, Croatia, 20–23 September,
2016: Part 2. Information Research, 2017, 22(1), paper isic1618 (together with
Hanna Carlsson), “Researchers’ online visibility: Tensions of visibility, trust and
reputation”, in press at Online Information Review (together with Sara Kjellberg). In
particular, thoughts developed in two publications have found their way into the
book, where they were further developed and deepened, namely: “The search-
ification of everyday life and the mundane-ification of search” in Journal of Doc-
umentation, 2017, 73(2), 224–243 (together with Cecilia Andersson, Hanna
Carlsson, and Sara Kjellberg), and “Controlling the urge to search: Studying the
informational texture of practices by exploring the missing element” in Informa-
tion Research, 2017, 22(1), CoLIS paper 1613.
Drafts of individual chapters or parts of chapters have been presented at various
conferences and seminars. The panel (organised by Olof Sundin and Trine
Schreiber) “Is there a need for re-claiming search in information literacy practices
research?”atCoLIS9inUppsala2016provideduswithanearlyopportunitytotest
one of the leading hypotheses of the book – namely that the practice turn in
informationbehaviourand literacy research has made search and search engines less
visible. We are grateful to Cecilia Andersson, Andrew Cox, Helena Francke,
Camilla Moring, Ola Pilerot, and Trine Schreiber, who all contributed to this
thought-provoking debate then and on other occasions. This theme appears in
particular in Chapters Two and Six of the book. The paper “Controlling the urge
to search: Studying the informational texture of practices by exploring the missing
element”waspresentedatthesameconferencebyJuttaHaider,andideasfromthis
paper have been developed and interwoven particularly into Chapter Four. The
conference paper “Critical algorithm literacies: An emerging framework” was pre-
sented at the ECREA Digital Culture and Communication Section Conference in
Brighton in the autumn of 2016. The conference paper “Facts, fake and informa-
tion literacy: A conceptual discussion of critical evaluation of information” was
presented at ISIC 2018 in Krakow the autumn of 2018. These two papers, both
presentedbyOlofSundin,haveprimarilybeendevelopedintoChapterFiveofthis
book as have ideas tested by Jutta Haider at a research seminar at The Swedish
School of Library and Information Science, University of Borås. Thank you to Jan
Nolin,LouiseLimberg,and AnnemareeLloyd andtheotherseminarparticipantsfor
perceptive and encouraging comments. Ideas that found their way into Chapters
Three and Four have also been presented at the Department of Science and Tech-
nology Studies, Alpen-Adria-Universität in Klagenfurt, Austria, by Jutta Haider.
ThankyoutoDanielBarbenandNilsMatznerforcommentingandaskingthought-
provoking input. In sum, the feedback and many constructive comments we were
viii Acknowledgments
given on all these occasions have been very important and we appreciate and are
grateful for the valuable input of all participants.
TheDepartmentofArtsandCultural SciencesatLundUniversityandallitsstaff
provides an excellent environment for conducting research. Chapter One was
presented at our Information Studies Research Seminar. Our thinking owes depth
to the collective endeavour of our own research group, Information Practices:
Communication, Culture and Society and we would, therefore, also like to men-
tion, in addition to the names presented in the introduction of the acknowl-
edgement, Lisa Dahlquist, Charlotte Hagström, Fredrik Hanell, Linnea Lindsköld,
Nora Schmidt, Björn Magnusson Staaf, Fredrik Åström, and Carin Graminius
(thank you for your help with translating from Chinese). In particular we need to
thank Johanna Rivano Eckerdal for her intellectual companionship and generosity.
Furthermore, in our meetings with students on the Master’s Programme in Archi-
val Studies, Library and Information Studies, and Museology (ALM) and in the
bachelor program in Digital Cultures we on a daily basis develop our thinking
through lectures, supervision, and other dialogues. The library facilities at our
faculty are first-class, and we would especially like to mention Ulrika Karlsson
who, in her capacity as subject librarian for information studies, has demonstrated
what library support beyond facilitating access can be. We are also grateful to our
editor Heidi Lowther and editorial assistant Elizabeth Risch for their support and
responsiveness.
We have had the opportunity to discuss our research with wider society on a
number of occasions, with journalists, teachers, and librarians around Sweden, and
through our commissioned work at the Swedish National Agency for Education,
the Swedish Schools Inspectorate, The Internet Foundation in Sweden and Gov-
ernment Offices of Sweden. Our outreach contacts have certainly made us better
prepared to communicate the societal relevance of our research, which we hope
shines through in the book.
Finally, but certainly not least, we would like to express our gratitude to the
invited readers who we asked to comment on separate chapters or the entire
manuscript. Dirk Lewandowski, Isto Huvila, Pamela McKenzie, and Nils Pharo
have read one to two chapters and provided us with invaluable comments that
helped us develop our argument. A final and special thank you goes to Ola Pilerot
and Trine Schreiber who, despite a tight time frame, read through the whole
manuscript. Your generous and insightful comments late in the process have
developed the manuscript into something much better than it would have been
without you.
Enjoy,
Jutta Haider & Olof Sundin
Lund, Sweden, Autumn 2018.
1
INTRODUCTION
This is a book about search. It is concerned with how search, searching, and with
them search engines have become so widely used that we have stopped noticing
them. It is thus more accuratelya book about invisiblesearch.One of society’skey
infrastructures for knowing and becoming informed is computerised systems sup-
portingthesearchforandlocatingofdocumentsandinformation.Theuseofthese
systems, search engines, is curiously dispersed and centralised at the same time. It is
dispersed across a vast array of social practices in which it has acquired close to nat-
uralised positions (Hillis et al. 2013), while it is commercially and technically cen-
tralised and controlled by a handful of very dominant companies, especially one
extremelypowerfulglobalplayer,Google.Inthecourseofthis,wecancallitdouble
movement,searchhasallbutvanishedfromsight.Invisibilityisoftenhighlightedas
one ofthe keyfeaturesof aninfrastructure (Star1999) and clearly,inthissenseit is
safe to say that search engines are a fundamental information infrastructure. Yet,
what does that mean more specifically? How do people deal with search engines?
How do we research their use and which strands of previous research help us
understandthisall-encompassing,increasinglyinvisibleinformationinfrastructure?
With digital tools now permeating most aspects of society, the use of search
engines has become integral to everyday life on many levels. Searching for recipes
or the bus timetable, for medical advice, for old neighbourhood photos or the
weather report, searching for work-related documents, legal guidance or for the
whereabouts of former colleagues, all this is done instantaneously on the same
interface and using the same devices, thus inscribing itself into various parts of life.
Search permeates myriads of social practices and everyday life at all levels, but it
often remains invisible. It appears to be simple and is done effortlessly. Yet, this
effortless simplicity with which online search intersects with everyday life in so
many different situations conceals an astounding complexity. Accordingly, various
strands of research traditions have for a long time been dealing with different