Posted in data collecting, media literacy, media messages, parents and technology, searching

Your News, My News – Do We Get the Same Views?

screen-shot-2016-12-07-at-10-24-28-amAccording to a video shared by the DuckDuckGo website, when we  search for information on Google each of us can get slightly different, or sometimes enormously different results – even if we use the exact search terms in the exact order and at about the same time. DuckDuckGo, a search engine that emphasizes privacy, is a Google competitor.

The order of Google’s results may guided by what it knows about the individual who is doing the search. (Check out Ghostery to identify trackers on any or all of your pages.)

Collected information – including any previous searches, where we live, what we read, where we get our news, what we purchase, how much we travel, and much more can affect what we see in the results. I never thought about this much, but I do remember how a few years ago a group of my middle school students were searching on Google for information, and I noticed and was puzzled that similar searches sometimes generated lists of slightly different results. Continue reading “Your News, My News – Do We Get the Same Views?”