Search engines in polarized media environment: auditing political information curation on Google and Bing prior to 2024 US elections

Search engines (SEs) influence how individuals are informed about election-related developments and perceive the environment in which elections take place. It has particular implications for (perceived) polarization, especially if SEs’ curation leads to a skewed treatment of information sources; however, until now, it is unclear how different SE factors may affect the emergence of such a partisan gap. To address this shortcoming, we audit the two largest Western SEs, Google and Bing, prior to the 2024 US presidential elections and examine how retrieval of election-related information varies depending on the queries’ thematic focus, user location, and time when the search was conducted. Our findings indicate that both SEs prioritize left-leaning journalistic media sources, with the degree of ideological slant varying between Democratic- and Republican-focused queries. We also observe limited effects of location- and time-based factors on organic results, but more volatility for results from additional interface elements.