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Contribution Details

Type Master's Thesis
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Exploratory Data Analysis of People also asked Questions and Answers on Google in the Domain of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Lukas Grässle
Supervisors
  • Aleksandra Urman
  • Aniko Hannak
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Faculty Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics
Date 2023
Abstract Text This thesis conducts an explorative data analysis of People also asked (PAA) questions and answers on Google. The study uses web scraping techniques to collect PAA data for various search terms in the domain of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). By performing an algorithmic audit, we show that inside the US, neither the location nor the search history influences the set of questions and answers a user is presented by Google for a given search term. The collection of PAA data for an array of real-world search terms in the domain of CAM reveals that many of the answers provided by Google are not from independently fact-checked sources, but instead biased websites such as retail businesses or special interest advocacies. Our results further suggest that the question and answer pairs in PAA might lead to confirmation bias.
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