This guide is intended to help you conduct research for your term paper proposal and final draft.
If you do not find what you need in this guide, please Ask a Librarian.
If you don't need an answer immediately, contact Sylvia Roberts, for Communication. You can reach me at or . My time is split between SFU Burnaby and SFU Vancouver it works best if we can set a specific time and place to talk, by phone or in person.
Staying current with the news
The SFU Library subscribes to print editions of several daily newspapers, such as the Vancouver Sun, the Globe & Mail, the New York Times, etc.
The SFU Library subscribes to a variety of news databases, which are listed in our News sources page. These full text databases include the text of stories published in newspapers and is searchable. However, most do not duplicate the print format of newspapers, excluding advertisements, photos, etc.
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PressReaderContains the last 1-3 months coverage in newspapers from Canada and throughout the world. Replicates page images, with ads, photos, etc. reproduced as in the print edition
- CBCA Complete
Canadian publications focusing on current events: newspapers, newswires, newsmagazines, as well as television and radio transcripts
- Canadian Newsstream
Fulltext of major Canadian newspapers and Canwest's small-market BC papers. 2 day embargo on news stories means that the most current issues are not part of the database until they are two days old.
Term paper criteria
As stated in the Term Paper Explanation, your term paper should have a clearly stated argument or thesis.
This thesis should emerge from your research findings. Your position on your selected topic should be informed by evidence found in scholarly research literature.
An APA formatted bibliography of at least 5 academic sources needs to be included with your proposal. As well as pertinent course readings, you are required to use a minimum of 2 additional academic references. These references can be to journal articles or books, whether published in print or electronic form.
If you are uncertain as to how to recognize an academic source, refer to the SFU Library guide What is a Scholarly Journal?
You are required to cite these sources in APA style. If you are unfamiliar with how to do this, see SFU Library's APA Citation Guide.
Preparing to search
Start by writing down the topic of your hard news stories and your observations of the coverage of that topic.
Note the 4 media types and outlets that you will use as the focus for coverage.
Review your course readings to find those that discuss issues related to the nature of your hard news topic selection.
Do some test searches to discover what kind of communication research has been done that relates to news coverage similar (in some way) to your focus. The results may suggest some ways to focus your topic and provide some perspectives for your argument. Test searches will also help you test the viability of your topic choice by ensuring that you can find enough scholarly research to support your discussion.
You will have to decide whether the resulting articles are useful for examining the nature of your hard news story's coverage, whether discussing coverage of similar stories or media outlets.
It is a convention of scholarly literature to cite publications that the author has consulted in the course of their research. This is an advantage as scanning their reference lists can often provide you with a direct route to additional sources.
Scholarly books provide in-depth treatment of topics and can provide a useful overview of issues. Find books by searching the library catalogue or using the library search box in the upper right hand corner of the SFU Library home page.
Searching for academic articles can help you focus your topic, providing examples of specific research questions, methods, theoretical approaches and findings. See below for links to article databases that are effective for researching CMNS 235 topics.
Search terms:
Spend some time planning your search for relevant literatures so you have a strategy if your first search doesn't produce useful results.
Start by writing out your research questions, for example:
You may not be able to find sources that discuss all of these questions but you may be able to find sources that discuss aspects of them.
Identify the key concepts included in your question.
Consider alternative terminology for your main concepts. You will be using these as search terms so it's useful to have some additional words, if your first search terms don't produce useful results.
As you search, you will encounter additional search terms describing relevant publications, such as subject headings, descriptors or author keywords.
Depending on what you find in your initial topic testing searches, you may want to focus your research, by specifying the news medium or how the influence is manifested, for example, newspapers, television, radio, online, etc.
Searching for articles
As directed, you need to find academic articles, in addition to your course readings, to support your discussion of news coverage.
Academic articles can be found by searching article databases. Each database contains records describing articles published in every issue of an array of academic journals. You can search by topic and find articles that match your search terms.
Start your search for news coverage related articles in the following databases. Use the Get@SFU link to find available full text if not included within the database.
- Communication & Mass Media Complete
Indexing & abstracts for over 550 journals in the fields of communication and mass media studies
- Sociological Abstracts
Indexes sociological literature, including communication. Strong scholarly content.
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Indexes popular magazines and academic journals, many that cover communication and media studies topics
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Indexes Canadian publications, business, news & scholarly
- Business Source Complete
Indexes business literature. Good for telecommunications, media and cultural industry information, advertising and marketing topics.