This Article Full Text (OnlineFirst PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Baram-Tsabari, A. Articles by Segev, E. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Exploring new web-based tools to identify public interest in science

¹ Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
² Hebrew University and Ben Gurion University

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ayelet{at}technion.ac.il.

	Abstract

There is scant research-based evidence regarding what the public is interested in knowing about science, and more knowledge is needed to tailor relevant and engaging formal and free-choice science environments for different publics. This methodological paper describes the potential and limitations of three existing web-based tools – Google Trends, Google Zeitgeist, and Google Insights for Search – for PUS research. It shows how these tools can be used to (1) identify interests in science and pseudoscience, (2) conduct a cross-national comparison of popular science and pseudoscience-related searches and (3) discover possible motivations when searching for specific terms. Trends identified using analyses of online queries are discussed. These provide a bottom-up assessment of PUS, and may add another argument to the controversy regarding quantitative measures and the deficit model.

First published on October 9, 2009
Public Understanding of Science 2009, doi:10.1177/0963662509346496


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?