The New Reality – How Google Determines Our View of the World

The New Reality – How Google Determines Our View of the World

Google is everywhere. We search the internet with Google Search, use Google Chrome as our browser, watch videos of our favorite artist on YouTube or look for directions with Google Maps. Next to that, Google cleverly uses our search results to make advertisements that fit our personal interests. One can say that when one is on the internet, Google determines what we see and hear, in short, Google determines our view of the world. And as it manipulates our view of the world, does it also change our relationship to culture and the contents of these cultural products?

            The rise of the internet and the increasing importance of Google as a search engine led to an interesting development, one that creates the image of Google as the gatekeeper of culture for this generation. Google gives access to all sorts of art works, whether it is paintings, architecture or literature, to everyone who has the means to use the internet. Google Images can be used to look at paintings, while the new Google Art even enables users to zoom in so much that you can actually see the brush strokes and cracks in the paint. Pictures of architecture or famous photographs can also be found here, and provide the user with information about the maker of the artwork, the social and historical context in which it was produced and other related artworks. Google Books gives everyone access to almost all the books ever published, one can listen to music on YouTube or watch webseries and the list goes on. All these different media are not only brought together, but are also equalized. Google does not make a difference between high art or low culture. However, the increasing accessibility of cultural products does not mean that one’s own knowledge of culture grows, but there is certainly the possibility that such a thing could happen, a possibility that previously did not existed.

            Natalie Fenton states that ‘[c]hoices made by the audience must be looked at within the social context of their daily life and the content itself must be interpreted according to the social and political circumstances of its production’ (2007: 25). This social context she speaks of partly consists of the background knowledge of the audience, because this knowledge determines the way someone sees and makes sense of the world. When one looks at a painting, for example, this knowledge enables them to either interpret the artwork by placing it in a certain (art)historical context or, when one lacks this kind of knowledge, compare it to artworks they do know. With Google, everyone has access to all kinds of background ‘knowledges’, however, these are sorted by popularity, for the most popular sites appear first in the search results.

Does this mean that all the different interpretations will slowly become one and the same, when everyone uses the most popular search result as their ground of knowledge? This is an interesting dilemma that comes up when one takes into consideration that Google, even though it does not appear as such, is still a company that wants to make a profit. Without being aware of it, Google steers its users onto a certain path, by showing personalized search results based on previous ones, or by creating personalized advertisements. Even though the internet enables its users to broaden their knowledge about just about everything, there is the danger that by using similar search inquiries and by not questioning Google results that one creates his own discourse. The media are, according to Timothy Havens et al, a symbol generating and ideological institution, creating its meaning through internalized institutional discourses ‘acted upon by cultural workers’ (2009: 247). Google itself is not a symbol generating medium, but it is a platform for media that create meaning in their cultural products. Many cultural products can be found through Google, but the way in which they can be found, is manipulated by Google. By personalizing search results and advertisements, by only showing what the search engine thinks its user wants to see, it in itself creates some kind of personalized discourse for its user.  

Google gives us the possibility to find artworks with one mouseclick, and thus enables someone to ever increase their background knowledge. The way in which art is thus interpreted is constantly changing. This shows that culture is not a text, an abstract object, but a practice, as Sybille Krämer and Horst Bredekamp would say (2013: 21). An artwork alone means nothing, but acquires its meaning (and status) in the act of interpretation. It is, in a way, a cog in the machine that is culture, one that enables its audience to both actively change its meaning but also to develop the audiences own knowledge. The personalization of search results also shows that discourses are ever changing, and that this change is only possible through the input of the audience.

It is hard to see Google as what Jonathan Sterne describes as the old definition of an industry, a ‘monetization’ of cultural products (2014: 50). Sure, it is a company that, as is described above, creates a certain discourse that changes the way its users view cultural products and thus make sense of the world. Yet it is only a platform which one can use to find art works. Certainly, Google has several branches that create their own cultural content, like the videos on YouTube, but Google does not have an influence on the content itself, only on the way people view that content. YouTube is a good example of how audience, cultural content and context are working together as a symbol generating machine. The context in which videos are created form a framework of certain trends in content, for example certain video games that all the gaming channels play. The input of the audience is very crucial in the creation of a trend, because the number of viewers determines if something is popular enough. How the channels decide to show their content is again dependent on their intended audience. This example counts for Google as a whole: audience input, primarily the popularity, decides what content is shown at the top of the search results, in turn reaching the most people and changing their discourse when they incorporate this knowledge into their own discourse. The way in which one interprets cultural content and thus makes sense of the world is changing faster than it ever has before.

BBB, FM, LB, MM, YB

Proposition/Thesis:

Google has been gaining profits by being a media platform for contents that don't belong to it, but it has the power to control its massive audience.

Sources

·         Timothy Havens, Aamanda D. Lotz & Serra Tinic (2009), ‘Critical Media Industry Studies: A Research Approach’, in: Communication, Culture & Critique 2, pp. 234-253.

·         Sybille Krämer & Horst Bredekamp (2013), ‘Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques – Moving Beyond Text’, in: Theory, Culture & Society 30 (6), pp. 20-29.

·         Natalie Fenton (2007), ‘Bridging the Mythical Divide: Political Economy and Cultural Studies Approaches to the Analysis of the Media', in: Eoin Devereux (ed.), Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates. London: SAGE, pp. 7-31.

·         Jonathan Sterne (2014), ‘There Is No Music Industry’, in: Media Industries Journal 1 (1), pp. 50-55.