Comparing Online Scientific Info in Different Languages
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Comparing Online Scientific Info in Different Languages

Being science literate is considered important; It is often thought as being able to find scientific information easily and use it when you need to, or when you want to.

However, many people struggle with these tasks for many reasons.

One reason is the “language divide": the disparities between those who know dominant languages such as English and those who do not.

So far, little is known about the availability of scientific information online in different languages.

Research Question

Are there differences in the quality of online scientific information between languages and scientific fields?

Methods

To investigate the research question, we undertook the following steps:

  1. We selected terms from three scientific fields (domains): Physics, chemistry and biology;
  2. We collected online search results regarding scientific terms in English, Hebrew, and Arabic;
  3. We analyzed their content, and rated their scientific and pedagogical quality.

The statistical methods included univariate and multivariate ANOVA and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA).

Findings

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Findings indicate that searches in English yielded overall higher quality results, compared with Hebrew and Arabic, but mostly in pedagogical aspects, rather than scientific ones.
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Overall, the differences in quality have more to do with the “language factor” than with the “(scientific) field factor” (e.g., Biology vs. Physics; Figure 1).
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Figure 1. Effects of language and field on combined measures of information quality—MANOVA results. One, two, and three bullets (•, ••, and •••) denote statistical significance at the .05, .01, and .001 levels, respectively.

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There appears to be a “language divide” in access to online science content. We conclude this because clustering the results by language (Figure 2A) yields better separation than clustering by scientific field (Figure 2B). When the results are close together, means that the quality scores are closely aligned with each other.
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Figure 2. LDA of search terms (A) by language (colors) and (B) by field (shapes). (C) Differences in quality (areas of the triangles on the LDA plane) between equivalent terms in different languages. LD1 and LD2: First and second linear discriminants, respectively.

Conclusion

We discovered that the quality of online scientific information differs across languages.

We think that scientific communities and institutions should take action to mitigate this problem. One way they could do this is by making high-quality information available in additional languages.

Acknowledgements

The Linear Discriminant Analysis was conducted by my colleague, Dr. Eyal Nitzany.

This study is first and foremost the brainchild of my colleague, Kawther Zoubi. She also carried out most of the study; I picked up where she left off.

This entailed:

  • further analyses of the dataset;
  • creating the visualizations,
  • re-conducting the literature review, and
  • writing up the manuscript.

Press Releases and Media Coverage

  • Quality of scientific information on Google differs between languages - Jerusalem Post, 22.7.2021
  • באיזו שפה כדאי לכם לחפש בגוגל? - ישראל היום, 22.7.2021
  • Technion press releases: English, Hebrew (July 2021)

Citation

Zoubi, K., Sharon, A. J., Nitzany, E., & Baram-Tsabari, A. (2021). Science, maddá and ‘ilm: The language divide in scientific information available to internet users. Public Understanding of Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/09636625211022975

Science, Maddá, and 'Ilm: The language divide in scientific information available to Internet users - Kawther Zoubi, Aviv J. Sharon, Eyal Nitzany, Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, 2021

Abstract The Internet has potential to alleviate inequality in general and specifically with respect to science literacy. Nevertheless, digital divides persist in online access and use, as well as in subsequent social outcomes. Among these, the "language divide" partly determines how successful users are in their Internet use depending on their proficiency in languages, and especially in English.

journals.sagepub.com

Science, Maddá, and 'Ilm: The language divide in scientific information available to Internet users - Kawther Zoubi, Aviv J. Sharon, Eyal Nitzany, Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, 2021
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Open Access