I think I have always known that Google has “biases”, but I never thought about it much in practice. I think these biases can be based on browser history, country searched within, culturally understood gender roles, understanding in a culture of ethnic diversity, and the list goes on. This activity helped me realize just how much bias there really is in using a search engine such as Google. Really any search engine I think. I tried using DuckDuckGo as well and it turned up similar images in terms of gender and ethnic diversity. I tried using a different browser, and still very similar images. I also tried turning on my VPN and searching from various countries. Once again, many of the top ten images were similar in nature. This was the most surprising to me; even using a VPN didn’t significantly change my results! This being the precursor to the introduction of search operators opened my eyes to how necessary search operators are.

DuckDuckGo search on Brave browser using a United Kingdom IP address.

 

Google search on Google Chrome browser using a Russian IP address.

Beyond knowing that Google has biases, I have also known for a long time that Google (as well as other search engines) have advanced search capabilities. I never saw much of a use for them until following through November’s Iranian Hostage Crisis search terms. It was hugely eye opening for me to realize how useful using search operators is in terms of finding the information you are actually looking for. As I was doing the activity I was thinking about intercessory prayer. I believe that part of this is educating ourselves about the location/people group/issue we are praying for. Easily being able to find news from the perspective of the nation one is interceding for can be an invaluable tool.

One thing that I found rather challenging while completing the second activity was remembering all the different search operators and trying to figure out how to combine them to really narrow down the search for what I was looking for. The search I found the most challenging was the “academic articles from Canadian universities on the topic of leadership”. This was the most successful result I was able to turn up:

This challenge made me realize just how much there is to learn when it comes to using search operators. I feel like I could take an entire course on that alone! I am sure that as I progress in the MAL program I will find the search operators that are the most useful and it will only take time before using them becomes intuitive.