Does it get better with time? Web search consistency and relevance in the visual representation of the Holocaust

Abstract

Web search engines play a major role in curating information about the present but also about historical phenomena. However, while doing so, search engines can be subjected to systematic and non-systematic forms of malperformance, which is particularly concerning in relation to information about mass atrocities, where it can interfere with the ethical obligations of protecting victims’ memory. This paper looks at how time-based changes in the relevance of information sources and content items about the Holocaust on six Western and non-Western search engines influence the consistency of representation of this specific instance of historical mass atrocities, and relevance-related changes affect different forms of search malperformance. For this aim, we conduct an algorithm audit of image search results of six major search engines in 2020 and 2021 using the "Holocaust" query in the Latin and Cyrillic scripts and analyse the audit's results using a combination of historical and qualitative content analysis. Our findings demonstrate substantial variation in what search algorithms treat as the most relevant visual representations of the Holocaust between individual engines and between queries in the Latin and Cyrillic script topic-wise and highlight that some forms of malperformance (e.g. retrieval of antisemitic content) are more visible in response for the queries in the Cyrillic script.