Finding academic articles for communication research
Communication and Mass Media complete is a database for finding articles on general communication and mass media topics. It's the best place to find articles on best practice in the journalism, public relations, advertising or communication sectors.
If you are having trouble finding the best keywords to search on your topic, use the Thesaurus option in this database. The Thesaurus allows you to search for keywords (or subject headings) used in the database to describe different topics, and check to see if you are using the best keyword that matches with your research topic. For example, if I search for Brand names, the database suggests I use the keyword Trademarks for my searching.
Once you find one or two good academic articles on your topic, look at the reference list in the article to find other good sources to help widen your research. You can then try and search for the books, journal articles and reports that the author/s of the article referred to in their paper.
Recommended databases for Journalism and feature writing
Recommended databases for Public Relations, Advertising and Market analysis
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WARCA database presenting Case Studies and other resources on Advertising and Media Campaigns.
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Business Source CompleteSearch here for peer-reviewed and scholarly journal content related to all aspects of business, including company and industry reports and information.
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EmeraldA comprehensive journal collection which provides access to the very latest business and management, PR and marketing journals. Includes Case Studies.
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APAFT (Australian Public Affairs)Informit APAFT (Australian Public Affairs Full Text) covers Australia's political, economic and social affairs.
Database search Tips
I'm not finding many relevant resources, how can I find more?
To increase your search results you can apply some of the strategies outlined below:
Join similar terms with OR, for example:
TV OR television to ensure either term appears in your results
organi?ation will find both organisation and organization
Use the truncation symbol at the end of your terms to find variant endings. The truncation symbol is usually the asterisk * for example:
- brand* will find brand, brands, branding
- market* will find market, markets, marketing, marketer
- Australia* will find Australia, Australian, Australians
Use quotations marks around words that go together (this is called phrase searching). For example if you search "communication plan", with the quotation marks you should get results with both words together, rather than results that just have the word communication, and just the word plan.
I'm finding too many resources, how can I narrow my search?
To narrow your search results you can apply some of the strategies outlined below:
Join different concepts or ideas with AND, for example:
brand recognition and celebrity to ensure both terms appear in your results.
Licensing information: Please read what you can and can't do with each resource in the A-Z Databases under 'License Information'. Queries can be sent to the Publisher Licensing Consultant.