Influence of hate speech about refugees in search algorithms on political attitudes: An online experiment

Abstract

This article assesses the effects of hate speech compared to positive and neutral content about refugees in search engines on trust and policy preferences through a survey experiment in Germany. The study uncovers that individuals with an extreme-right political ideology become more hostile toward refugees after being exposed to refugee-related hate speech in search queries. Moreover, politically biased search engines erode trust similarly to politicized sources like politicians, and positively and negatively biased content is trusted less than neutral content. However, individuals with a right political ideology trust more hate speech content than individuals with a left-wing ideology. Individuals with right-wing ideology are also almost three times as likely to intend to click on hate speech suggestions compared to left-wing counterparts.