Skip to Main Content

Media Studies

Google Search Tip

Use Google to find government or nonprofit websites, as well as websites from specific countries

Follow this pattern:

Keyword site:domain extension

Examples:

social media hacking site:org
This search will exclusively return results from non-profit organizations websites
 
twitter guidelines site:gov

This search will exclusively return results from government websites

social media site:nyc.gov
This search will exclusively return results from New York City government websites

social media guidelines site:edu
This search will exclusively return results from educational/academic websites

 

Domain extensions:
gov - government
org - nonprofit organizations
edu - educational institutions
com- commercial
net- community networks
mil - military
int - international organizations

 

To find websites from a specific country, use the Country Codes

 

Example:
social media politics site:pk
Will exclusively return results with websites from Pakistan

Evaluating Internet Information

Evaluate Information you find on the Internet:

•Who is the Author or publisher? (Go to About link on websites)
•What is the mission of the website? Who is is intended Audience?(About or Home page, or "What we Do" etc.):
•Is there Bias or Opinion?
•How Updated is the Information?
•Check the domain: .edu and .org domains are non-commercial (see Google Search Tip box)

•Remember that much information on the internet is produced by businesses, agencies, organizations or individuals with a certain bias or agenda

 

Websites as Primary Sources

•When a website is not reliable as an objective academic source that considers various viewpoints (a secondary source), it may be valuable to you as a primary source ("raw material") that you can then analyze.

Selected Internet Resources

National Public Radio's show on all things media; includes searchable archive of shows

"Critical Commons is a public media archive and fair use advocacy network that supports the transformative reuse of media in scholarly and creative contexts."

From the Museum of the Moving Image; "a gateway to the best online resources related to film, television, and digital media"

 

From the Pew Research Center. Research on all aspects of  internet and social media use, statistics, charts, polls, trends. A good place for quick numbers.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar provides access to scholary articles and conference papers, many of them available online as pdf files.

 

•If you open Google Scholar from with in the Library Tab of your my.newschool account, you'll also have access to journal articles that are part for for-pay databases (such as JStor).

 

•Do not pay to get the full text of any article, if you can't find the full text, Ask a Librarian for help.