Jaron Harambam (PhD) is Assistant Professor of Media, Truth Politics and Digitalization at the Sociology Department of the University of Amsterdam. His research deals with public disputes over truth in a digitalized public sphere. More specifically, he studies conspiracy theories, news and platform politics, and AI (content moderation, search/recommender systems). Central to his research is the participation of multiple stakeholders to design our (future) digital worlds along democratic and public values. His monograph "Contemporary Conspiracy Culture: Truth and Knowledge in an Era of Epistemic Instability" (2020) is out at Routledge.
He is also affiliated with the Athena Institute at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he is co-PI of a NWA funded research project on climate science citizen assemblies. This research project aims to inform climate research with the interests, concerns and desires of citizens, in an effort to bring climate science and society closer together.
He was Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship holder at the Institute for Media Studies (KU Leuven, Belgium), and worked before as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam, being part of the multi-disciplinary Fair News Project studying the role of algorithms in news provision.
He defended his PhD (cum laude, highest distinction) October 2017 at the Rotterdam Centre for Cultural Sociology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, titled: “The Truth Is Out There” – Conspiracy Culture in an Age of Epistemic Instability. He won the "Best Dissertation 2017-19" award of the Dutch Sociology Association (NSV). He is Chair of the open-access Dutch-Belgian peer-reviewed journal Tijdschrift Sociologie, and member of the European network of scholars working on conspiracy theories, COST COMPACT.