Neutral News Aggregation? Comparing the Portrayal of German Politicians in Bing News and Google News Search Results

Abstract

News search engines are popular tools to navigate the online news landscape. By filtering and ranking articles, they act as secondary gatekeepers and can influence what news is accessible. This study examines to what extent two news search engines deliver different perspectives on political actors in the context of several political events. In a quantitative content analysis of 400 search results and 200 retrieved articles, the portrayal of German politicians in Bing News and Google News search results for 16 different search terms is assessed. The findings show that, although the Google News results are more likely to include opinionated articles, most politicians are portrayed similarly in the articles retrieved by both services.