Google, the Medium, and Hermeneutic Principles

Abstract

Google’s role in curating the Internet, is, conceptually, a simple one. It offers speed and knowledge infrastructures of unfathomable size. It is a medium, a filter, through which you, the inquirer, meets information or data provided by other users. What has been more difficult to understand and grapple with, over the twenty-one years since Google Search has existed as an information consolidator, is a) its role as a multimodal digital medium for the user’s approach to knowledge design, and b) its media identity as the giant of information consolidation and dispensation, that, based on its famously secret algorithm, supports a business model focused on advertising. In this article, I join a number of media studies and digital culture experts, who warn that we should first begin to understand the Internet before we employ Blockchain technology for Web 3.0 purposes. In order to utilize Google as informed consumers, we need to understand not only what it is as a medium, but also how we as consumers co-create the Googlesphere by both designing and accessing knowledge. For while the mission of Google describes what sounds like a democratic model, the hermeneutics of “organize,” “world’s information,” “universally accessible,” and “useful” point to semantic categories with considerable potential for bias, exploitation, or abuse when applied to an advertising enterprise.

Keywords:

• Media studies
• hermeneutics
• Google
• medium
• search engine

Notes

1 Google has its own software with which to “slap” data it deems irrelevant and seeks to weed out from the Internet: the “Panda.” This has affected a great many businesses and other sites over time. For more information, consult the latest explanation of the update I could locate: https://ignitevisibility.com/Google-panda-update/. Accessed 13 July 2019.

2 For information on algorithms, bias, and accountability see Robyn Caplan et al., “Algorithmic Accountability: A Primer.” Data & Society, 2018, https://datasociety.net/output/algorithmic-accountability-a-primer/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2019.

3 “Blockchain kann zur massiven Kontrollmaschine werden.” Wird das was? From Die Zeit, 6 June 2019, https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2019-06/dezentrale-datenbank-blockchain-shermin-voshmgir-wird-das-was-digitalpodcast. Accessed 13 July 2019.

4 https://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-share-of-search-engines/. Accessed 10 July 2019.

5 Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” July/Aug. 2008, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/. Accessed 3 Jan. 2019.

6 Anke Finger and Danielle Follett, The Aesthetics of the Total Artwork. Johns Hopkins UP. 2011.

7 https://www.quora.com/What-percent-of-the-web-is-accessed-through-Google-Search

8 Google searches made it all the way to the Capitol on July 16, 2019, when The Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on “Google and Censorship through Search Engines,” led by Ted Cruz who sought to examine Google’s perceived bias against conservative news: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/Google-and-censorship-though-search-engines. Accessed 11 Oct. 2019. A computer specialist on search engine optimization (SEO) explains the technology behind Google searches: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/Googles-bias-conservative-sites/316785/#close. Accessed 11 Oct. 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anke K. Finger

Anke Finger is Professor of German and Media Studies and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut. She has published widely in the areas of Modernism, Media Studies and Digital Humanities, and Intercultural Communication. Her books include Das Gesamtkunstwerk der Moderne (2006), The Aesthetics of the Total Artwork (2011, co-edited), Vilém Flusser: An Introduction (2011, co-authored), and KulturConfusão (2015, co-edited). She is currently at work on a book on how to evaluate digital scholarship. From 2016–2019 she inaugurated and directed the initiative “Digital Humanities and Media Studies” (DHMS) at the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut.