A Comparative Analysis of the Role of Iranian Public Science Magazines in Upgrading Scientific knowledge of their Audience

This article offers an argument on public science magazines in Iran and their ability to increase public scientific literacy. This research paper covers 144 public science magazines that appeared since some100 years ago in the late 19th century in Iran and have gone through various changes. We selected 12 issues from 12 magazines randomly to establish our argument. Then a qualitative content analysis was used to study these 12 issues. In order to perform the qualitative content analysis on the sample issues, we first operationalized the concept of "public scientific literacy" in accordance with the characteristics that can be identified in an individual who is considered to be "scientific literate". During this process we identified four indicators that could represent "public scientific literacy" and they included: 1- scientifically-driven actions, 2- scientific attitudes, 3- social reflexivity of science, and; 4-scientific norms of behavior. Had these four characteristics been present in any of the randomly selected issues, we considered the text to be able to deliver scientific literacy to its audience and to increase the level of scientific literacy among individual audiences. Some of the findings indicate that Nojoom Magazine was among the best in terms of delivering scientific literacy to its audience and contributing to and increase of scientific literacy among its audience.