On the February 21, 2011 edition of The Colbert Report, there was a humorous but still telling segment (watch) about former Congressional Senator and Representative Rick Santorum (R-PA). The segment detailed the effects of Dan Savage’s appeal to readers and followers to “Google bomb” then U.S. Senator Santorum in 2003 as a response to some of Santorum’s comments about homosexuality. In April of 2003, the Senator made several controversial statements that essentially compared homosexual acts to bestiality and incest, and stated he believed such acts to be a threat to society and the institution of the family (read excerpts from the interview). Savage, author of the sex advice column “Savage Love,” appealed to his readers to come up with a definition of “Santorum” to memorialize the Senator’s comments as an act of protest.
After settling on a definition, Savage created the website Santorum to promote the newly coined sexual neologism that meant a “frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.” Over time, and many searches later, Savage’s website is to this day at the top of the results list when you Google “Santorum.” [In a nutshell, in order to Google bomb, or to inflate the ranking of a site under a particular query, you rely on people clicking on a specific link in the search results list and you rely upon other websites linking to a particular page using a specific anchor text. In this case, other websites linked to Savage’s site using the anchor text “Santorum” and many people clicked on his site when Googling the term.]
As funny as the story is, it raises important questions about the power over discourse given the new possibilities presented by the web. Much is to be said for a crowd-sourced means of discourse. In a very general way, it can be likened to subvertising (see AdBusters) where popular advertisements are parodied or spoofed to illustratively and critically question the meaning of the original advertisements and the discourses they are selling to the consumer. In a more specific way to Santorum’s case, using a Google bomb can be likened to muckraking. Not only did Savage make a successful attempt at a large-scale practical joke, he successfully drew attention to Santorum’s comments about homosexuality. Further, the result of the Google bomb would make it difficult for Santorum to promote his own website and the discourse he would wish to produce about himself on the web, especially should he consider running for the U.S. Presidency in 2012.
Yet, each of these strategies that combat dominant narratives are traditionally produced by the few and the privileged, and the same was true of the dominant narratives. Ultimately, what I wish to highlight with this post is that the web is fostering challenges to existing power relations over the production of discourse. The Google bomb presents an interesting case for the democratization of discourse production, and it provides evidence for possible strategies of altering what discourses become visible in the mainstream.
William Yagatich is a sociology graduate student at the University of Maryland. His post originally appeared at Cyborgology.
Comments 19
Nentuaby — March 2, 2011
The fact that all really prominent googlebombing incidents have so far been subversive is a historical coincidence. It is, after all, a truly democratic art... That is, one best practiced by whichever side is most clearly in the majority.
It so happens that due to self-selection effects, the majority of English-speaking internet users with the minimum tech-savvy to participate has been a very different group from the majority of English-speaking persons. That will change as tech savvy becomes a mandatory part of life in global culture.
Eneya — March 2, 2011
This is a tool and as we can see, it can be used by anyone.
One little example is the recent response from Google for a murder, which brings the wiki page about the term abortions as a second response.
So what we can see is that manipulating Google is something that is nto exclusive to positive and forward thinking and though most commonly, exactly the open minded are more technological, tricks are learned and repeated.
Something else, now, when we now that this is a tool, we look differently to the responses we see in Google.
We know they can be directly put there (Google ads) or manipulated (as per your example).
I have no specific conclusions, since the whole thing is still in process, but it is truly fascinating.
And kind of scary... but it's always like that.
Scapino — March 2, 2011
Google's official comment on Googlebombs:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/01/quick-word-about-googlebombs.html
Google's Webmaster Guidelines, which let you know that tricky stuff, like Google-bombing, can lead to blacklisting or down-ranking of your site:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
AlgebraAB — March 2, 2011
No comment on "search engine optimization"? SEO is related to "Google Bombing" - different methods but similar goals: affect search rankings. It seems far more widespread and noteworthy than Google Bombs, in my opinion.
I thought this was an interesting comment:
"Yet, each of these strategies that combat dominant narratives are traditionally produced by the few and the privileged, and the same was true of the dominant narratives."
Really? All dominant social narratives are produced by the few and the privileged? I disagree. That seems incredibly reductionist and it seems to negate any possibility for authentic democratic or mass cultural/social expression.
Basically that little comment seems to be meant to cover for the fact that, yes, the average web user is probably better educated and financially better-off than the average American. So, ultimately I don't buy into the idea that this is fostering a "democratization of discourse production" whatsoever. This is privileging a tech-savvy group of political activists. It seems to me that Google's basic search algorithm, sans conscious efforts to manipulate it for political ends, is far more democratic.
Thomas — March 2, 2011
Good post and analysis:
"Ultimately, what I wish to highlight with this post is that the web is fostering challenges to existing power relations over the production of discourse. The Google bomb presents an interesting case for the democratization of discourse production, and it provides evidence for possible strategies of altering what discourses become visible in the mainstream."
-for the time being at least.
It seems that the fight over net neutrality really is a fight over who can control the production of discourse.
Enjoy the Internets while they last folks.
Tom — March 3, 2011
Hearing of Googlebombs I immediately think of searching "miserable failure" on google a few years ago. The first result was George W. Bush's biography, later followed by the competing candidate's biography.
Obviously there was a second tech savvy party trying to control the result for "miserable failure".
"This is privileging a tech-savvy group of political activists. It seems to me that Google’s basic search algorithm, sans conscious efforts to manipulate it for political ends, is far more democratic."
I'd like to remark that Google can be manipulated from anywhere, allowing everyone to participate in googlebombing. Thus you'd get global democracy. Which might be a good thing - I'm from Germany and think that Bush and Republicans in general are a miserable failure.
Concerning the privileged nerds: Some day not that far away everyone will be a digital native and have the skills to do such stuff. Untill then I'm sure that it will be possible to find enough able people to help every side of a discourse/conflict/election.
The Nerd — March 3, 2011
Dan Savage is a troll. Why does nobody say this? Because he's trolling "for a cause?" I'm sure we'd all cut Sarah Palin as much slack, right people? ...Right? **Crickets**
Lest we forget, the definition of a troll is: "someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. While the term troll and its associated action trolling are primarily associated with Internet discourse, media attention in recent years has made such labels highly subjective, with trolling being used to describe intentionally provocative actions outside of an online context."
M — March 3, 2011
I would not agree to this. When it's a mostly unknown keyword such as this then sure, you can do a lot with it if you have enough people. But Google's search engine is inherently a promoter of the status quo. Once you cross the the threshhold of getting one definition as the prime result, every second up there is going to cement its position there, raising the bar for the visits needed to change that position. In that way it's very similar to how hegemonic groups stay in power in the real world. Just look at what you get by googling sociological images for example - the old blog is at the top, despite being defunct for years now. Even worse are the results if you try to google for the results of last night's election in the netherlands - all you get is the results from Last year, because the impact that election made simply raised the bar too high for the currently relevant results to break.
Blix — April 2, 2012
I don't care if you disagree with someone, this behavior is completely out of hand. It is taking advantage of someone who thinks differently than you. Why can't someone have views on topics without being persecuted or belittled? It's sickening.