VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
KU Leuven, Belgium.
Public Underst Sci. 2022 Aug;31(6):784-798. doi: 10.1177/09636625221092145. Epub 2022 Apr 28.
Conspiracy theories are central to "post-truth" discussions. Official knowledge, backed by science, politics, and media, is distrusted by various people resorting to alternative (conspiratorial) explanations. While elite commentators lament the rise of such "untruths," we know little of people's everyday opinions on this topic, despite their societal ramifications. We therefore performed a qualitative content analysis of 522 comments under a Dutch newspaper article on conspiracy theories to study how ordinary people discuss post-truth matters. We found four main points of controversy: "habitus of distrust"; "who to involve in public debates"; "which ways of knowing to allow"; and "what is at stake?" The diverging opinions outline the limits of pluralism in a post-truth era, revealing tensions between technocratic and democratic ideals in society. We show that popular opinions on conspiracy theories embody more complexity and nuance than elite conceptions of post-truth allow for: they lay bare the multiple sociological dimensions of .
阴谋论是“后真相”讨论的核心。官方知识得到科学、政治和媒体的支持，但却受到各种寻求替代（阴谋论）解释的人的不信任。尽管精英评论员哀叹这种“不实信息”的兴起，但我们对人们对此主题的日常看法知之甚少，尽管它们对社会有影响。因此，我们对荷兰报纸上一篇关于阴谋论的文章下的 522 条评论进行了定性内容分析，以研究普通人如何讨论后真相问题。我们发现了四个主要争议点：“不信任的习惯”；“让谁参与公共辩论”；“允许哪种认知方式”；以及“什么是利害关系？”这些不同的观点勾勒出了后真相时代多元化的局限性，揭示了社会中技术官僚和民主理想之间的紧张关系。我们表明，公众对阴谋论的看法比后真相精英概念所允许的更为复杂和微妙：它们揭示了. 的多个社会学维度。
