INVESTIGATING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION ON PLANETARIUMS IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL BASED ON A SEMANTIC AND DIACHRONIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

This study analyzes scientific production on planetariums in Southern Brazil, aiming to examine the discursive constructions surrounding these spaces for science communication and popularization of astronomy. Historiographical and bibliometric, the research used Publish or Perish software to collect data from Google Scholar on 31 fixed and mobile planetariums, resulting in a corpus of 313 documents published between 1974 and 2025. After filtering and normalizing the titles, the data were processed using Voyant Tools and Gephi, producing analyses of lexical frequency, term co-occurrence, and semantic network metrics for two distinct periods: 1974–2015 and 2016–2025. The results indicate a significant growth in recent scientific production, associated both with the expansion in the number of planetariums and with public policies aimed at science communication. Scientific discourse is organized around the "planetarium-education-astronomy" triad, highlighting three main axes: the cultural and scientific mediating roles, pedagogical and formative use, and the teaching of astronomical content. The analysis also reveals greater thematic density and diversification after 2016, reflecting the maturation and consolidation of planetariums as hybrid spaces for education, culture, and science.