An Analysis of Fields and Scientific Literacy Content Elements of Scientific Reports in a Popular Portal Site in Korea

The purpose of this study is to analyze science fields and content elements of the science reports in a web portal site of Republic of Korea in view of scientific literacy. The main results of the analysis on the 679 reports sampled in a year are as follows. First, 506 reports in 46 fields were identified. Reports about technology and earth science occupies 16% respectively, and life science occupies 13%, medical science 4%, chemistry, company, others 3% and physics 1%. Almost reports show technology as associate field. Second, the frequency rate of reports including scientific literacy content elements is 52%. Reports related to 'physics' and 'chemistry' as dominant fields show relatively high rate in scientific literacy elements. The element, 'social context' is included in about 96% of the reports. Both 'data and statistics' and 'application' show relatively low rate and large gaps according to dominant fields. A few concluding remarks and proposals follow from these results. First, as almost science reports show the nature of integrated science, scientific literacy acquisition through science reports in internet requires the integrated scientific view. Especially most science reports includes the contents related to technology or medical science, so the point of view in the science-technological literacy is required. Second, the scientific literacy content elements in reports show various rates according to dominant fields. Therefore, science reports need to complement the deficient content elements to carry out the role of science reports as scientific literacy sources.