Rosas 1

Maricruz Rosas

Professor Granillo

English 101

04 March 2019

Searching the Web

This world has the power at the reach of their fingertips. This society has created the

internet system where one can communicate, share ideas and research for the gain of knowledge.

In the book They Say I Say with Reading has an excerpt titled “Google, Democracy, and the Truth

about Internet Search” by Carole Cadwalladr presents how this society has made the web into a

controlling search engine. The author explains that typing two words in the search bar without

typing the full question allows the search engine to provide bias by making its own suggestions.

Cadwalladr determines this as bias because it does not allow one to fully develop their question

without having to think about a suggestion that one may have never thought about. This does

allow for knowledge; however, the author finds that this society should be based off of their needs

and not interpretations of the internet. The author strongly agrees that learning should be based off

of one’s need, and for them to develop the thought process. The author Carole Cadwalladr’s,

“Google, Democracy, and the Truth about Internet Search” relied on Audience, Diction and Logic

and argued that today’s society is in desperate need of an improved internet search that presents;

Knowledge, Equal amount of Bias, and tools that benefit the research. However todays

corporations are manipulating the internet to their needs; therefore, todays population need to

regain their internet access in order to liberate from controlling internet search and allow for a

search engine that has no bias.

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To commence, the author used Audience, Diction and Logic to present the urgency of

changing the internet search engine. Cadwalladr targets the American society in the excerpt as she

uses both Logic and diction to explain that the search engines create gruesome results from the

internet, and that these tools are remarkable but in the wrong hands can lead to extreme failure of

the system (483). Cadwalladr defends her point by having evidence that furthers the previous

statement; She communicates that it is researched in the United States of America (487). The

authors explicit analysis of her claim was well presented because once she presented a statement,

she automatically targeted the American society. It was also represented in a professional matter

that one can believe her statement of wanting to change the search engines for non-bias ones

because she gave the proof in that instance.

Furthermore, the way Carole Cadwalladr expresses her claim of wanting to create a

search engine that allows one to do their own search which is the opposing spectrum. The

opposing spectrum can claim that suggestions allows for more knowledge even if it creates bias.

In “Do Experts or Crowd-Based Models Produce More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopedia

Britannica and Wikipedia” by Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu demonstrates, “Some studies

show that collective decision making can generate high quality output and can sometimes be

more accurate than experts’ decision making” (946). This states that allowing search engines to

give out suggestions leads to more subtopics into the research ones is creating. While if one uses

a search engine that doesn’t allow any bias gives no access to a bigger thought process. Carole

Cadwalladr claim is effective because even is one does allow for bias it does not get one the

information they want. Carole Cadwalladr express. “It strives to give you the best, most relevant

results” (481). This explains that a search gives one the topic one needs and furthermore create

the bias on ones thought rather than having the search engine creating a bias that is irrelevant to

the question.
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For instance, Cadwalladr argues that their needs to be knowledge in the research because

the search engine has developed fake news through bias suggestions. Fake news leads to

unwanted bias such as, “This is an entirely circular knowledge economy that has only one

outcome: an amplification of the message” (Cadwalladr 489). The statement made explains how

this fake news are so intelligent because they hook a suggestion that is irrelevant to one’s topic

buying them in by “authority” looking website. The author does suggest that the search engines

need to be more in the control of ones needs because one needs the authorities’ websites that

answers the research question. Also, to not aide the side tracking of the suggestion that only

leads to false inaccurate knowledge.