Search Engines, Pluralism And Diversity: What Is At Stake And How To Move Policy Forward?

This chapter will discuss whether and how the regulatory notions of diversity and pluralism in the public information environment could be used as normative signposts in the context of search engine governance. Search engine quality will be considered to be a question about the way in which fundamental notions relating to the quality of the public information environment are affected by the way in which search engines value, select, rank and prioritize information and communication streams. As search engines have become essential for certain societal demands, such as the free flow of and the access to information and ideas, it has become essential to discuss how well the current search engines are actually fulfilling these demands and how policies relating to pluralism and diversity could start to better take account of this.