The second RAT Community Meeting on 27th September in Hamburg gathered researchers interested in utilizing search engine data for their research.

Key features of the program include:

Showcases: Gain insights into how respected researchers use RAT to investigate a wide range of topics such as climate change, politics, health, and more.
Tutorials: Learn how to effectively use this powerful tool in your research, from data collection to in-depth analysis. Improve your skills and unlock RAT‘s potential.
Developer Session: Join us for an in-depth developer session where we’ll explore the full potential of RAT and discuss how to extend RAT together.
Poster Session: Explore how RAT has been applied in various research projects and how RAT’s functionality has been expanded through add-ons.

RAT Community Meeting 2024

Introduction

RAT: A flexible tool for search engine studies – Dirk Lewandowski

This talk introduces the RAT software and its components. You will learn what types of studies can be conducted using the software. Furthermore, RAT’s modules for designing studies, collecting data, collecting assessments from jurors, and automatic data analysis will be explained.

What’s new in RAT? – Sebastian Sünkler and Tuhina Kumar

Over the last year, we’ve added a lot of new functionality to RAT, which makes the software even more flexible. Furthermore, an improved user interface makes designing and conducting studies much easier.

Generating queries for your search engine study – Dirk Lewandowski

The first step in search engine studies is to generate a list of queries. Often, researchers just use what comes to mind or use pre-defined list of query words. However, do people actually search for these words? RAT can help you generate query lists that consider how often these queries are searched for.

What’s new in RAT?

Sebastian Sünkler and Tuhina Kumar
Hamburg University of Applied Sciences

Generating queries for your search engine study

Dirk Lewandowski
University of Duisburg-Essen, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences

RAT Community Meeting 2024

Hands-on tutorials and Developer Session

How to RAT? A Hands-On Tutorial to Designing and Conducting Studies With RAT – Sebastian Schultheiß and Tuhina Kumar

In this tutorial, you will explore the functionality of RAT and design your own studies. You will be introduced to creating a study, collecting data from search engines, and analyzing the results.

Evidential value of search engine studies – Dirk Lewandowski

Search engine studies are often criticized, among others, for the arbitrary choice of search queries and the low number of results considered. With RAT and add-ons like the Query Sampler, we address some of these concerns. However, much more needs to be done to increase the evidential value of search engine studies. In this tutorial, participants will discuss how to improve research designs for such studies and how the collected data can be analyzed to obtain meaningful results. The tutorial will contain a presentation and group discussions.

Developer Session for RAT – Sebastian Sünkler

Join us for an in-depth developer session where we’ll explore the full potential of RAT. This session is designed to guide you through the process of setting up and configuring your own installation, ensuring that you have complete control over your environment. We’ll also delve into the mechanics of extending RAT, providing insights into how you can customize and enhance its functionality to better suit your needs.

Additionally, we will open the floor for a collaborative discussion on the future development of the software. This is a unique opportunity to exchange ideas, discuss potential features, and explore avenues for future collaboration in improving and expanding the software together.

Showcases

Tracing the Climate Change Counter Movement across platforms. Reflections on the role of search engines – Jutta Haider, University of Borås, Sweden

The climate change counter-movement (CCCM) is active on many fronts. Lately, it seems that an opportunistic exploitation of already established conspiracy narratives is increasingly tapping into the discontent of groups negatively affected by the green transition and forging new coalitions. Much of this is happening on social media. But search engines also play an important but poorly-understood role. This talk draws on data created with the Result Assessment Tool (RAT) to explore and illustrate some aspects of this. As this is a work in progress, the talk is also seen as an opportunity to discuss methods and empirical choices with the RAT community.

Bias in Library Search Systems – Daniel Klein, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany

Libraries use search engines to enable users to explore the entire collection quickly. In contrast to Google or Bing, the search results displayed by online library systems are considered neutral and objective, although they can also be biased according to specific criteria. However, little research has been done into the biases of library search engines to date. We investigated the search results of the online library catalogue Katalogplus from the Hamburg State and University Library for system-based biases. The results illustrate the need for more scientific research into library search systems.

Which parties would Google and Bing support in the 2024 European Parliament election? An analysis of stance in their search results – Hanna Käfer, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany

As the 2024 European Parliament election approaches, many people will utilize search engines to gather information about election-related topics. The information discovered through these searches could impact peoples’ voting preferences. Therefore, we examined the information presented to users when searching for election-related topics. We also compared the information provided by Google and Bing to look for differences in their stances.

How helpful is Dr. Google when you’ve got a sexually transmitted disease? Comparing Search Engines for Health Information – Aylin Imeri, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

Nowadays, apart from asking or seeking advice from doctors, Dr. Google seems to be another option for individuals. According to the Statista Research Department (August 26, 2024), about 46% of people living in Germany searched for health-related information on Google in 2023.

In our case study, we show to what extent the three search engines (Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo) have similarities and differences when it comes to information about sexually transmitted diseases (STD). Among other aspects, we analyzed whether a website was search engine optimized (SEO) and what type of domains were represented between the three search engines.