• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.1005-1014
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• 2017

Focusing on the role of the science museum as an institution to improve the scientific literacy of the public, this study investigated public perception and behavior about science museum to know how much science museums affect the public by using social media big data analysis. For this purpose, we extracted texts containing 'science museum' in Naver blogs and Twitter, analyzed them by using network, frequency, co-ocurrence, and semantics analysis and compared them with the results in English speaking countries. As a result, blogs were mainly concerned with science museum among parents who have young children, while in Twitter posts from many students who visited as a group appeared. Therefore, the Korean public used science museum mainly as a space for children's experience, and in this case, programs and exhibitions of science museums are perceived positively. On the other hand, students who visited as a group showed some negative emotions. The result of comparison with the cases of foreign countries in terms of the function of the third generation science museum such as communications with the science museum and the public and the participation of the public in science, the Korean public hardly mentioned the scientific contents, words related to communications such as 'argue', and curators or staff after visiting the science museum. In contrast to many verbs related to meaningful activities such as 'learn', 'participate', 'listen', 'read', 'ask', 'think' appeared in English, only a small number of verbs include 'ask' and 'thin' appeared in Korean. Therefore, science museum need to improve impression, communicating with public, and involving activity with impact and variety after visit.