Conceptual Models for Search Engines

Summary

Search engines have entered popular culture. They touch people in diverse private and public settings and thus heighten the importance of such important social matters as information privacy and control, censorship, and equitable access. To fully benefit from search engines and to participate in debate about their merits, people necessarily appeal to their understandings for how they function. In this chapter we examine the conceptual understandings that people have of search engines by performing a content analysis on the sketches that 200 undergraduate and graduate students drew when asked to draw a sketch of how a search engine works. Analysis of the sketches reveals a diverse range of conceptual approaches, metaphors, representations, and misconceptions. On the whole, the conceptual models articulated by these students are simplistic. However, students with higher levels of academic achievement sketched more complete models. This research calls attention to the importance of improving students’ technical knowledge of how search engines work so they can be better equipped to develop and advocate policies for how search engines should be embedded in, and restricted from, various private and public information settings.