A Query Log-Based Study of Cross-Nation Perception

Query logs are a huge and solid source for sociological analysis. However, they are insufficiently used in the sociological analysis, in particular in the comparative studies of different audiences. The paper presents a study of search images of Japan in queries of Russian and U.S. Web searchers. One-day logs of the Yandex, the Russian search engine, and the U.S. Excite were automatically analyzed to detect several categories of queries referring to Japan. Users submitting Japan-referring queries were attributed to these categorized. The study (a) compares rates of categorized Japan-referring users among Russian and U.S. searchers, (b) analyzes cross- linking between categories. The findings are: (a1) the Russian searchers are more interesting in Japan-referring topics, (a2) differences depend on categories: Russians show much more consumer interests, while U.S. are superior in masscult interests; (b1) the users submitting consumer queries less frequently search other topics referring to Japan; (b2) the users submitting queries relating to Japan culture more frequently search other Japan-referring topics; (b3) a Russian searcher searches several different Japan topics more frequently than U.S. searcher; (b4) the Russian and U.S. audiences significantly differ by the topic co-occurrence.