Conspiracy theories are immensely popular today, yet in the social sciences they are often dismissed as "irrational," "bad science," or "religious belief." In this study, we take a cultural sociological approach and argue that this persistent disqualification is a form of "boundary work" that obscures rather than clarifies how and why conspiracy theorists challenge the epistemic authority of science. Based on a qualitative study of the Dutch conspiracy milieu, we distinguish three critiques that are motivated by encounters with scientific experts in everyday life: the alleged dogmatism of modern science, the intimate relation of scientific knowledge production with vested interests, and the exclusion of lay knowledge by scientific experts forming a global "power elite." Given their critique that resonates with social scientific understandings of science, it is concluded that conspiracy theorists compete with (social) scientists in complex battles for epistemic authority in a broader field of knowledge contestation.

Despite their popularity and normalization, the public image of conspiracy theory remains morally tainted. Academics contribute by conceiving of conspiracy theorists as a coherent collective: internal variety is sacrificed for a clear external demarcation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands, we explore variation in the conspiracy milieu through people’s own self-understanding. More particularly, we study how these people identify with and distinguish themselves from others. The analysis shows that they actively resist their stigmatization as ‘conspiracy theorists’ by distinguishing themselves from the mainstream as ‘critical freethinkers’. The trope ‘I am not a conspiracy theorist’ is used to reclaim rationality by labelling others within the conspiracy milieu the ‘real’ conspiracy theorists. Secondly, their ideas of self and other make three groups apparent: ‘activists’, ‘retreaters’ and ‘mediators’. Conspiracy culture, we conclude, is not one monolithic whole, but rather a network of different groups of people, identifying with different worldviews, beliefs, and practices.

The deployment of various forms of AI, most notably of machine learning algorithms, radically transforms many domains of social life. In this paper we focus on the news industry, where different algorithms are used to customize news offerings to increasingly specific audience preferences. While this personalization of news enables media organizations to be more receptive to their audience, it can be questioned whether current deployments of algorithmic news recommenders (ANR) live up to their emancipatory promise. Like in various other domains, people have little knowledge of what personal data is used and how such algorithmic curation comes about, let alone that they have any concrete ways to influence these data-driven processes. Instead of going down the intricate avenue of trying to make ANR more transparent, we explore in this article ways to give people more influence over the information news recommendation algorithms provide by thinking about and enabling possibilities to express voice . After differentiating four ideal typical modalities of expressing voice (alternation, awareness, adjustment and obfuscation) which are illustrated with currently existing empirical examples, we present and argue for algorithmic recommender personae as a way for people to take more control over the algorithms that curate people's news provision. This article is part of a theme issue ‘Governing artificial intelligence: ethical, legal, and technical opportunities and challenges’.

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