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COMM 101 Research Guide: Find articles

REMINDER: Your source requirements

Your assignment requires you to find research articles that contain each of the following sections:

  • Research question and/or hypotheses
  • Method section
  • Results section
  • Discussion Section

Tip: If an article has a Method section, it will have all of these.

Keyword search to browse articles

Communication & Mass Media Complete database allows you to search through almost 1000 communication-specific news and research publications including 326 scholarly communication research journals.

Example research question: "Does the coverage of protests by journalism and news impact public perception of the movements?"

Keywords and synonyms to use in your search: protests, journalism, news, public perception

1. Search: protests = 4,747 articles.

2. Increase results by selecting the suggested OR statement for protests:

  • protests OR demonstrations OR activism = 11,258 articles.

3. Add journalism = 2,743 articles.

4. Add public perceptions or attitudes or opinion = 268 articles.

5. Limit to: Peer Reviewed and Publication Date (use 2015-2025) = 241 articles

Time for you to search!

  • Each article result contains an Abstract. In just a few seconds, you can determine if the article is a good fit or not.
  • Which of these are original research studies? Tip: find the METHOD section.
  • If you find an article, use the citation generator to create your APA 7 citation. 
  • Keep your article by downloading it or by using the permalink.

Use this example citation: 

Brown, D. K., & Mourão, R. R. (2022). No Reckoning for the Right: How Political Ideology, Protest Tolerance and News Consumption Affect Support Black Lives Matter Protests. Political Communication, 39(6), 737–754. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2022.2121346

Try SURF first: Search the title using the library catalog. Limit to Articles.

Scenario Two: You searched the title in SURF, but there were no results. 

If SURF does not find your article, try pasting the title or DOI of the citation into Google Scholar like this example. 

 

Scenario Three: You tried SURF and Google Scholar, but no full text of the article is available.

Request it from SU Libraries Interlibrary Loan. This is a free service for students. Article requests are usually fulfilled on the same day as requested!