COMM 297 Southerland: Assignment review

"Begin searching for and reviewing at least 10 peer-reviewed literature related to your topic which also prepares you for the next couple sessions." ~ 297 Syllabus, Dr. Southerland. 

To successfully complete the Article Analysis assignment, a full-fledged review of literature, and your big research project, you will need the following: 

• A substantive research topic statement.
• Keywords derived from that statement - to be used searching the library's tools.
• A knowledge of important journals in Communication research
• Familiarity with using the library's search tools to find articles within those journals
• Familiarity with the anatomy of an article citation
• Ability to recognize how the research was done and conclusions from it

Your job as a researcher is to leave no stone unturned.

Three information domains that you should explore include: books from the academic library, and articles from library databases, and scholarly sources you may find searching the Web. If you over rely upon tools like Google Scholar, you are not doing your due diligence. 

Be selective: find peer-reviewed sources that are not just relevant to your topic; each source should also serve a very specific purpose in your essays/presentations. Your sources are like car components under the hood. Each part does something very specific to make it all work.