Web Search: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

I’m pleased to announce that Web Search: Multidisciplinary Perspectives has, after 2 years in the making, been published in the Information Science and Knowledge Management series by Springer.

Co-edited with Amanda Spink, Web Search is a collection of chapters approaching Web search engines from philosophical, cultural, critical, legal, economic, historical, political, and information scientific perspectives.

The official description from Springer:

Web search engines are not just indispensable tools for finding and accessing information online, but have become a defining component of the human condition and can be conceptualized as a complex behavior embedded within an individual’s everyday social, cultural, political, and information-seeking activities.

This book investigates Web search from the non-technical perspective, bringing together chapters that represent a range of multidisciplinary theories, models, and ideas. It examines the various roles and impacts of Web searching on the social, cultural, political, legal, and informational spheres of our lives, such as the impact on individuals, social groups, modern and postmodern ways of knowing, and public and private life. By critically examining the issues, theories, and formations arising from, and surrounding, Web searching, this book represents an important contribution to the emerging multidisciplinary body of research on Web search engines.

The new ideas and novel perspectives gathered in this volume will prove valuable for research and curricula in social sciences, communication studies, cultural studies, information science, and related disciplines.

The table of contents features many of the leading scholars on Web search engines from across the globe:

Part I: Introduction

• Introduction (Amanda Spink and Michael Zimmer)

Part II: Social, Cultural, and Philosophical Perspectives

• Through the Google Goggles: Sociopolitical Bias in Search Engine Design (Alejandro Diaz)
• Reconsidering the Rhizome: A Textual Analysis of Web Search Engines as Gatekeepers of the Internet (Aaron Hess)
• Exploring Gendered Notions: Gender, Job Hunting and Web Searches (Rosa Mikeal Martey)
• Searching Ethics: The Role of Search Engines in the Construction and Distribution of Knowledge (Lawrence Hinman)
• The Gaze of the Perfect Search Engine: Google as an Infrastructure of Dataveillance (Michael Zimmer)

Part III: Political, Legal, and Economic Perspectives

• Search Engine Liability for Copyright Infringement (Brian Fitzgerald, Damien O’Brien, and Anne Fitzgerald)
• Search Engine Bias and the Demise of Search Engine (Eric Goldman)
• The Democratizing Effects of Search Engine Use: On Chance Exposures and Organizational Hubs (Azi Lev-On)
• ‘Googling’ Terrorists: Are Northern Irish Terrorists Visible on Internet Search Engines? (Paul Reilly)
• The History of the Internet Search Engine: Navigational Media and the Traffic (Elizabeth Van Couvering)

Part IV: Information Behavior Perspectives

• Toward a Web Search Information Behavior Model (Shirlee Ann Knight and Amanda Spink)
• Web Searching for Health: Theoretical Foundations and Connections to Health Related Outcomes (Mohan Dutta and Graham. Bodie)
• Search Engines and Expertise about Global Issues: Well-defined Landscape or Undomesticated Wilderness? (Jenny Fry, Shefali Virkar, and Ralph Schroeder)
• Conceptual Models for Search (David Hendry and Efthimis Efthimiadis)
• Web Searching: A Quality Measurement Perspective (Dirk Lewandowski and Nadine Höchstötter)

Part V: Conclusion

• Conclusions and Further Research (Amanda Spink and Michael Zimmer)

More details on Web Search: Multidisciplinary Perspectives are available at Springer, Amazon, and WorldCat.