Googling in Russian Abroad: How Kremlin-Affiliated Websites Contribute to the Visibility of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories in Search Results

Research that audited search algorithms typically deployed queries in one language fielded from within only one country. In contrast, this study scrutinized 8,800 Google results retrieved in November 2020 from 5 countries (Russia, the United States, Germany, Ukraine, and Belarus) in response to queries on COVID-19 conspiracy theories in Russian and English. We found that the pandemic appeared similar to people who googled in Russian independent of their geolocation. The only exception was Ukraine, which had implemented rigorous media policies to limit the reach of websites affiliated with Russia within its national public sphere. Conspiracy narratives varied with input language. In response to Russian-language queries, 35.5% of the conspiratorial results suspected U.S. plotters to be behind the pandemic (English language: 5.8%). All source pages that blamed U.S. plotters showed connections with Russia's elites. These findings raise important theoretical questions for today's multilingual societies, where the practice of searching in nonlocal languages is increasing.

Different platforms, different plots? The Kremlin-controlled search engine Yandex as a resource for Russia's informational influence in Belarus during the COVID-19 pandemic

Extant research demonstrated that the algorithms of the Kremlin-controlled search engine Yandex, compared to those of its US-based counterpart Google, frequently produce results that are biased toward the interests of Russia's ruling elites. Prior research, however, audited Yandex's algorithms largely within Russia. In contrast, this study is the first to assess the role of Yandex's web search algorithms as a resource for Russia's informational influence abroad. To do so, we conduct a comparative algorithm audit of Google and Yandex in Belarus, examining the visibility and narratives of COVID-19-related conspiracy theories in their search results. By manually analysing the content of 1320 search results collected in mid-April to mid-May 2020, we find that, compared with Google, (1) Yandex retrieves significantly more conspiratorial content (2) that close to exclusively suspects US plotters to be behind the pandemic, even though the virus spread from the Chinese city of Wuhan across the globe.