Searching for Representation: A sociotechnical audit of googling for members of U.S. Congress

Understand

High-quality online civic infrastructure is increasingly critical for the success of democratic processes.

• There is a pervasive reliance on search engines to find facts and information necessary for political participation and oversight.
• We find that approximately 10\% of the top Google search results are likely to mislead California information seekers who use search to identify their congressional representatives.
• 70\% of the misleading results appear in featured snippets above the organic search results.