Unraveling the Web of Election Misinformation: A Close Look at GOOGLE's Role

Technology and politics seldom intersect as frequently as they do now, and the digital era has provided fertile ground for the spread of misinformation and – in this specific case – for the echoes that come from the antagonistic interaction between politics and technology in the modern world. While elections coming up in 2024 in the US, with its well-documented ideological polarisation, have thrust this landscape into sharp focus, there’s been much talk about the supposed pro-Democratic – or, more unabashedly, pro-liberal – bias of one of the major instigators of the digital world: Google. The goal of this article is to debunk this claim, while taking a glass-half-full approach to elucidate Google’s role in spreading information to the masses and, crucially, to emphasise the need for a critical eye when consuming news.

The Eye of the Storm: Elon Musk's Election Day Claim

Elon Musk, the eccentric owner of X (formerly Twitter) and a famed Donald Trump enthusiast, was accused of leading people into misinformation on Election Day. Musk reposted a X user named DogeDesigner who claimed that Google was ‘biased in favour of Kamala Harris supporters’ because their search results for polling places were ‘biased in favour of [Kamala Harris]’ voters, thereby helping the vice president ‘steal’ the election from Donald Trump. The misinformation claimed that the user in question would search for a polling place using a location name and Google search would provide polling places only for Harris supporters. The tweet has been viewed more than 1.5 million times, but a closer look reveals that the person who is ‘dishonestly stealing the election’ is the one who shared the claim, failing to understand how Google provides election-day information.

GOOGLE's Nonpartisan Voter Information Tool

For years, Google has marketed itself as a neutral provider of information – and this extends to how it handles queries related to elections. The ‘Where to Vote’ feature about which so much was written does not provide different assistance to voters who favour one candidate and not to those who favour another. The tool offers assistance to everyone: it is not ‘politically biased’ but geographically based – when a person inputs their address, Google provides information about the location of their assigned voting station.

The Real Story Behind the Harris Name

It seemed that the confusion arose from Google ‘biasing’ its search results for queries on ‘Harris’ towards a ‘Where to Vote’ box, which some interpreted as favouring the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. But Google said that this resulted from there being counties called Harris in Texas and Georgia – states in which some voters might want to search for information on polling places. This is a useful illustration of the perils of making snap judgments without being familiar with the background structure of how searches work.

Navigating Misinformation in the Digital Age

The swift propagation of what Musk first claimed is coupled with the difficulty of combating misinformation, especially in the context of a particularly emotive event such as a presidential election. In this context, transparency and rapid corrections from services like Google might be the only way to correct misunderstandings. But the responsibility must also fall on users to properly read and understand information we see online.

Reliable Resources for Election Information

Instead, voters who are bombarded by rumours and conspiracy theories are urged to turn to sources of information they trust. These could include official government search tools, or campaigns such as #TrustedInfo2024 with links to current information about polling locations and the voting process. Fact-checkers also provide an important public service in snuffing out false claims and preventing them from having an impact on the electoral process.

The Imperative of Digital Literacy

Musk’s retweet and Google’s recognisable role in the spread of election misinformation is a powerful reminder of the vital role digital literacy can play in filtering out the noise of online information flows – and misinformation. Skills in source evaluation and fact-checking developed through public digital literacy education campaigns can help citizens engage with the information world in ways that will allow them to manage the risks of a more equal and more rapid flow of information.

About GOOGLE: A Closer Look

Started in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google employed just 30-40 people in 1999 but has grown into a sprawling international tech corporation offering worldwide ‘online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and consumer hardware’. Its self-proclaimed ‘moonshot’ mission to ‘organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’ still guides everything that it does. Despite scandals and difficulties, including allegations of political bias reported by the Dutch and conservative US right-wing, this increasingly besieged corporation is still seen as a leader that can determine how and whether information is shared and interpreted around the world, without losing the balance between personalisation and neutrality.

Conclusion: The Quest for Truth in the Digital Arena

The storm created around Elon Musk’s accusations against Google on Election Day is a microcosm of the struggle over misinformation in the digital universe. Companies such as Google play an important role in contributing to the public interest requirement to provide verifiable information, but individuals must also step up and learn how to discern truth from fiction. As we consider the impact of digital information on democracy, the task of designing an informed electorate has never been more important.