Program

11:00	Íris Damião Elections in the Age of Algorithms: Evidence of Political Bias in Search Engines and Large Language Models
11:30	Patrick Parschan, Michael V. Reiss, Mario Haim, Kateryna Kasianenko, Ashwin Nagappa, Daniel Angus and Axel Bruns Using generative AI instead of search engines? Comparison and implications in the context of five state elections in Germany
12:00	Corinna Hertweck, Giovanni Astante, Aleksandra Urman, Oliver Marsh, Angela Müller and Aniko Hannak Restricted (Over)view: Audit of Google's and Bing's AI summaries in the context of Swiss popular votes

11:00-12:30 Session 3B: Track B: Everyday Practice & Communities

Chair:

Olof Sundin

Location: Session Room 2

11:00	Ben Hogan Emerging frictions: visual generative AI and the prompting practices of trans and nonbinary people
11:15	Klara Chlupata Chatbot creep: Generative AI in the everyday information practices of young adults
11:30	Helena Häußler Hello Donauwörth, I’m looking for…: Searching for Administrative Services on Municipal Websites vs. Google

12:30-13:30Lunch Break

13:30-15:00 Session 4A: Track A: Literacy & Education

Chair:

Axel Bruns

Location: Session Room 1

13:30	Joachim Griesbaum, Nicola Hoppe, Beatrix Kreß, Karen Malin Krüger, Bettina Lindner-Bornemann, Anna Mierzecka, Stephan Schlickau and Karsten Senkbeil Information Literacy in Conversational Search: Developing a Categorization Scheme for Measuring Information-Literate Behavior in Human-AI Interaction
14:00	Thao Laavunen Developing Critical Literacy for Entrepreneurial Search Practices in Digital Environments
14:30	Olof Sundin and Anna-Lena Godhe Navigating the Impact of Generative AI on Information Seeking and Learning in Schools: Insights from Swedish Teachers and Librarians

13:30-15:00 Session 4B: Track B: AI Overviews & Trust

Chair:

Jacqueline Sachse

Location: Session Room 2

13:30	Dirk Lewandowski On the Quality and Impact of Google’s AI Overviews
14:00	Kshitijaa Jaglan, Elsa Lichtenegger, Aleksandra Urman and Aniko Hannak Citation Design in AI Overviews: Effects on User Reliance and Source Engagement
14:30	Shari Thurow Information Retrieval Literacy in the Age of Generative AI: Bias, Query Formulation, and Prompt Engineering

15:00-15:30Coffee Break

15:30-17:00 Session 5A: Track A: Health & High-Stakes Information

Chair:

Alisa Rieger

Location: Session Room 1

15:30	Jessalyn Vallade and Meghan Dowell Think-Alouds and Results Assessment: A Study of Health Information Seeking Among People Who Use(d) Drugs
16:00	Natalie Tutzer Visibility by design: Reliability of top domains in search engines for health-related queries (abstract)
16:30	Luanne Sinnamon and Alice Li Generative AI search engines: cognitive authorities on climate change?

15:30-17:00 Session 5B: Track B: Panel Session

Chair:

Rosie Graham

Location: Session Room 2

15:30

Sebastian Sünkler, Phil Höfer, Philipp Schaer, Aleksandra Urman and Dirk Lewandowski

The Infrastructural and Software Challenges of Independent Search Engine Research

17:00-18:00 Session 6: Poster Session & Refreshments

Veronika Samostrol, Anastasia Murashova and Leonardo Dolgun

Quantifying the interdisciplinary research field of search engine studies

Lucas Braun

Searching for Pluralism: Bringing Search Engine Research into conversation with Media Pluralism Monitoring.

Alisa Rieger, Nicolas Mattis and Johanne R. Trippas

Information Access under Epistemic Uncertainty: Learning from Journalism

Tobias Siebenlist and Jennifer Gnyp

Enhancing Dataset Discovery in Open Government Data Portals: AI-Generated Metadata for Improved Information Access

Fabian Haak and Philipp Schaer

Revealing the Hidden Success Factors of Scientific Papers: The Case of Table and Figure References.

Meghan Dowell and Jessalyn Vallade

Using Think-Alouds for Search Term Collection for Search Engine Studies

Aylin Imeri and Sebastian Sünkler

Searching for the Unspeakable? Preliminary Insights from Sexual Health-Related Search Results Across Search Engines in Germany and the United States

Robert Musil

The Infrastructures of Visual Memory

19:00-22:00Conference Dinner

Seehaus Hamburg, An der Alster 10A, 20099 Hamburg

(20 minutes walk from venue)

Wednesday, September 16th

View this program: with abstracts session overview talk overview

09:00-10:00 Session 7: Keynote: Katrin Weller

Location: DITZE Lecture Hall

09:00

Katrin Weller

From Regulation to Research: Navigating the Digital Services Act’s Article 40 in Search Studies

10:00-10:30Coffee Break

10:30-12:30 Session 8A: Track A: AI answers, podcasts & behaviour

Chair:

Aleksandra Urman

Location: Session Room 1

10:30	Alisa Rieger, Vitalii Hirak, Stefan Dietze and Ran Yu Comparing Chat and Search for Engaging with News Topics
10:45	Dorian Tsolak and Leona Murray How Users Prompt Generative Search Engines for News and Political Information: An Empirical Taxonomy PRESENTER: Dorian Tsolak
11:00	Jacqueline Sachse Synchronous and Sequential Modes of SERP-based Relevance Evaluation
11:15	Rasmus Helles Are we being framed? Using integrative framing analysis to audit generative search engine results

10:30-12:30 Session 8B: Track B: Methods & Infrastructure

Chair:

Natalie Tutzer

Location: Session Room 2

10:30	Kateryna Kasianenko, Ashwin Nagappa, Oleg Zendel, Sally Storey, Axel Bruns, Daniel Angus, Kath Albury, Mark Sanderson, Abdul Karim Obeid, Amanda Lawrence, Anand Badola, Chenglong Ma, Ekaterina Tokareva, Fan Yang, Fletcher Scott, Futoon M. Abu Shaqra, India Read, Joanne Kuai, Kun Ran, Khanh Luong, Kieran Hegarty, Madhurima Khirbat, Nuha Abu Onq, Rayane El Masri, Sadia Sharmin, Sara Allawati, Shuoqi Sun, Udiana Dewi, Utami Diah Kusumawati, Xinye Wanyan, Yanheng Fang, Awais Hameed Khan, Bogdan Mamaev, Kacper Sokol, Kyle Herbertson, Johanne Trippas, Damiano Spina and Danula Hettiachchi Hacking the “wicked problems” of search: A hackathon as a collaborative approach towards capturing query variability PRESENTER: Kateryna Kasianenko
11:00	Ashwin Nagappa, Abdul Karim Obeid, Sebastian Sünkler, Kateryna Kasianenko and Daniel Angus Method Impossible? A Reflection on the Fragility of Methodologies And Infrastructures For Search Engine Research PRESENTER: Ashwin Nagappa
11:30	Ann-Sofie Klareld and Peter Bauer Under a new archival umbrella – the investment in a national search engine and its implications for the use of archives PRESENTER: Ann-Sofie Klareld

12:30-13:30Lunch Break

13:30-15:00 Session 9A: Track A: SEO, GEO & Visibility

Chair:

Meghan Dowell

Location: Session Room 1

13:30	Sebastian Schultheiß Modeling the Impact of Search Engine Marketing on User Knowledge Gain
14:00	Hadeer Elmalah Semantic Multi-Cluster Coverage and LLM Citation Frequency: A Controlled Generative Engine Optimization Experiment
14:30	Tereza Schambergerová Will AI Overviews Reshape Media SEO Strategies? A Longitudinal Analysis of Query Segments and Search Traffic Changes

13:30-15:00 Session 9B: Track B: Critical & theoretical perspectives

Chair:

Anikó Hannák

Location: Session Room 2

13:30	Bhaskar Mitra Emancipatory IR: Towards Critical Theories and Practices
14:00	Frans van der Sluis Responsible Consumption as an Information and Communication Problem for Search Engines
14:30	Lisa Eleonora Haase, Marius Brüning Genannt Wolter, Benno Michaelsen, Fabian Schott and Dirk Lewandowski Visual Cues and Trust in AI-Generated Search Results: An Eye-Tracking Study on Google AI Overviews

15:00-15:30Coffee Break

15:30-16:15 Session 10: Wrap-Up & Community Meeting

Wrap-up of the presentations programme, reflections from the organising team and announcement of SEASON 2027, followed by discussions on how to further advance the SEASON community. The conference continues on 17 September with a full day of workshops.

Presenters:

Conference chair: Rosie Graham
Local Chairs: Dirk Lewandowski and Sebastian Schultheiß.

Location: DITZE Lecture Hall

15:30	Rosie Graham, Dirk Lewandowski and Sebastian Schultheiß Presentations Wrap-Up PRESENTER: Rosie Graham
15:45	Rosie Graham, Dirk Lewandowski and Sebastian Schultheiß SEASON Community Meeting PRESENTER: Rosie Graham

16:15-17:15 Session 11: Film Screening

A selection of short films by artist and filmmaker Manu Luksch, exploring themes of algorithmic governance, surveillance, and AI in relation to the conference context.

Location: DITZE Lecture Hall

16:15

Rosie Graham

Short Film Selection: Algo-Rhythm and Others

Thursday, September 17th

View this program: with abstracts session overview talk overview

09:30-12:45 Session 12: Track A: Workshop

09:30

Rosie Graham

Investigating Search: A Hands-on Workshop with the Investigating Search Toolkit

12:45-13:45Lunch Break

13:45-17:00 Session 13A: Track A: Workshop

13:45

Sebastian Sünkler, Oliver Koop, Sebastian Schultheiß, Björn Quast, Tuhina Kumar and Dirk Lewandowski

Conducting Search Data Related Studies with the Result Assessment Tool (RAT)

13:45-17:00 Session 13B: Track B: Workshop

13:45

Muhammad Taimoor Khan, Alisa Rieger, Johannes Kiesel, Dimitar Dimitrov and Stefan Dietze

Introducing Open and Reproducible Web Search for the Social Sciences