A Variety of 'Others': Images of 'Moscow Migrants' in the Search Results of Google, Yandex and DuckDuckgoo

Abstract

Images of migrants formed by Russian digital media is a favourite topic of sociologists. This article considers the media constructs of 'migrant', describing mainly clichés about migrants from Central Asia that are relayed by digital and traditional media. Often after reading these works, it seems that the image of a 'migrant' in the Russian media is quite homogeneous and has a negative connotation by default. Yet, on closer inspection, this is not the case: the image of a 'migrant' for an Internet user will be a combination of texts and images, which will differ depending on the search engine. The aim of the article is to compare the combinations of images and texts generated by different search engines for the query 'migrant', to determine whether the images presented by different systems differ and what these differences are. The hypothesis was that search engines, following the conjuncture of the moment
and the censorship of readers’ expectations, form different images of the 'migrant', changing combinations of similar semantic blocks (material objects, spatial context, and a person in texts and images). To test this hypothesis, I analysed the search results of Google, Yandex and DuckDuckgoo on request 'Migrant Moscow'. The image of a 'migrant' created by algorithms consists of several blocks: 'migrant', the keyword that makes sense by associating with items (uniforms, weapons, work inventory); spatial context (symbolically loaded places, signs on the walls of departmental buildings, interior elements); social qualities. By building these blocks in different sequences, search algorithms form a complete image, which changes depending on the choice of the search engine.