Media and journalism

Planning your search

Try not to search your entire question at once. This won't find many useful results. The techniques below can help you plan your search.

Break your question into keywords

Start by breaking your question down into individual ideas and terms - we call these keywords.

Example question: How effective is media self-regulation?

From here, highlight what you think are the key words or concepts. You can usually ignore verbs such as 'discuss' or 'analyse' for your search.

• Media
• Self-regulation 

Find alternative terms

Once you have your keywords, take a moment to decide if there are other words or phrases that mean the same thing (synonyms). Not all authors use the same words to describe the same ideas.

If you're stuck, try Googling the term and seeing what comes up. You can look for words that mean the same thing, more specific terms or broader terms.

• Media : press, journalism
• Self-regulation: ethics, professional standards, accountability 

Other ideas for keywords

• Acronyms and Abbreviations- SMP, social media platform
• British and American spellings- standardisation, standardization 
• Terms you can write as one or two words- time frame, timeframe

Use limits and filters

There are millions of books, articles and websites available, and you won't have time to look through all of them. To help with this, you can decide on limits to your search. This can include:

• Publication date - depending on your topic, you may only want the most recent information available. 
• Language - you can limit your search to specific languages.
• Geography - you may only want research from or about a certain place.
• Sector - you can look at specific sectors such as the public sector or private sector, or industries such as healthcare or retail.

Information sources

For this topic, you might be interested in the following types of information:

• Theories and models on media ethics
• Definitions and concepts of media regulation
• Journal articles with specific studies on media self regulation 
• Professional standards for journalists

This is not a comprehensive list. Our Information sources page has more detail on source types and how they can help.

Choosing your own topic?

If you have chosen your own topic, it's important to start with some general searches to make sure there is information out there before you finalise it. If the topic is very specific or new, you may struggle to find enough information. If your topic is too broad, you will find too much information.