In Google We (mis)Trust: searching for search alternatives is conducted by Renée Ridgway as a post doc project within the research centre SHAPE – Digital Citizenship. As an artistic practitioner taking up the role of a critical designer in a digital democracy, the project aims to create various opportunities for digital activism by searching for search alternatives.

Situated at the interstices of critical design, feminist STS and software studies, it explores diverse objects, artefacts and tools, focussing on three different sites of investigation: One of the project’s objectives is to investigate alternative search engines and their rankings (outputs), comparing Google results with other search engines through data visualisations.

Additionally, it will explore interface interactions, how algorithmic search results and suggestions––autocomplete––influence user choice when entering queries (inputs) by developing the method ‘critical feminist screenshotting’. The project also aims to map alternatives as ‘critical cartographies’, illuminating artistic projects that encompass diverse approaches to search for a forthcoming exhibition.