Media – Chemistry – Interest? Identifying the Types of Students’ Chemistry - Related Media Reception

In the present qualitative study we identified different types of students’ mass media reception on topics related to chemistry. 19 secondary school students participated in guided interviews concerning their overall encounter with chemistry in the mass media. The collected data was analyzed referring to Grounded Theory by an open and axial coding procedure. The evaluation is based on four categories including context, social condition, cause and consequence of media reception. For analysis, a special focus was placed on the development of interest with respect to media reception. In total, four types of media reception like "The News Focused" or "The Effect Focused" were identified. The guided interviews showed that students are interested in a large variety of chemical topics present in media. Due to this, a strong individualization of chemistry related media reception can be concluded. Finally, it will be shown that the results of this study are relevant for revising teaching materials in order to create individualized and motivating learning tasks.