A Survey on the Science and Technology News Stories Published on Three Iranian News Websites

Communicating science to the public is one of the important issues in societies. Given the importance of news websites in communicating science, this article aimed to examine different aspects of science-related news stories like subjects, internationality, formats, and readers’ comments rate, published on the Iranian national news websites. Contents of 1711 science-related news of the top three ranked influential Iranian news websites, including ISNA, Mehr News, and Fars News, in one month in 2019, using the Dewey decimal classification (DDC) schema and inductive coding system, were analyzed. The results revealed that science and technology-related news stories published in the sample news websites have a bias toward international technology as the main subject class, and astronomy and medicine subclasses in the textual format. Like other developing countries, science reporting in Iran needs to be more professional, and there is a need for professional training programs for science journalists for better coverage of science-related news stories.