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Short abstract:

This study examines Italian teenagers' relationship with scientific information. Online sources dominate, while school and family play minor roles. Engaging with scientific info, teens prioritize entertainment value. Also, they idealize science, which poses risks during personal or societal crises.

Long abstract:

The intervention focuses on scientific information circulation and reception by high school classrooms in northern Italy. It is based on a two-year-long mixed-method research on twelve classrooms. We conducted qualitative interviews with students, teachers and parents; focus groups with students and parents; qualitative media diaries; commented social media video-content scrolling sessions; data donation.

We reconstructed the sources, online and offline, from which students draw scientific information. These are mostly from online media offerings – school and family (though not absent) have a minority role. Then, we observed the body of texts that these adolescents encountered. This is to understand how science reaches them: which channels, mediating figures; which contents arouse the most interest; what rhetoric is employed; how science is portrayed. Secondly, we examined their reception practices: consumption patterns, meaning attribution, sharing (mainly offline, within scholastic and domestic territories), and negotiation of these resources in daily lives.

Our observations suggest that scientific information does not have significant weight in adolescents' media consumption. What triggers their interest are outlandish news stories or topics that tie in with personal experiences (e.g. health). Critical to hooking their interest is the resource's ability to be entertaining: aesthetic and performative skills are essential for information transmission.

Furthermore, we noticed a tendency to idealize science, conceiving it as a truths-producing machine. This is reinforced by the generally apodictic approach to how scientific information is conveyed. Probed by personal or social crises (like a disease or the pandemic), this ingenuous trust in science can represent a vulnerability.