ABSTRACT
This chapter tests the empirical hypothesis. It hypothesizes that Google Search will return normatively and empirically valuable information for Google Search users researching information on direct democracy. The chapter uses a combination of observational quantitative and qualitative data to deeply explore the search results on our three ballot measures. It highlights the research in social and computer science specific to understanding search results and behavior. The chapter discusses the data and how it was obtained, outlines the hypotheses we test with our experiments, and describes the experimental procedures. Process tracing is a valuable tool to hypotheses using qualitative data, and helps researchers demonstrate causality. To investigate the quality of search results in a deeper way, we utilize George and Bennett's process tracing method. To assess the quality of the search results for the charter school amendment, we use the same methods. The chapter presents an important first in the Internet politics literature.
