Overview
The purpose of this assignment is to showcase your reading comprehension of academic articles and your understanding of media effects studies and media effects theories.
To begin this assignment please navigate to the San Jose State Library website and go to the tab for "articles and databases" from there you will want to select the "film + theater" database list. You will find all kinds of useful information on the film and theater database site. Please read the information therein as it will offer information and guidance regarding database searches. This is important because often students email me with questions about the databases which can be answered by reading the content of this site.
I recommend starting with the Mass Media Complete database. You can always expand to other databases in the future.
What is a database? It is a collection of academic journals, books, book reviews, book chapters, news articles, and other content that provides research scholarship (articles written by researchers). When you search in one database versus another you will find that there is some research content that is the same and some that is different from database to database.
Mass Media Complete has the largest selection of research scholarship of all the databases available in the media research field but it is not exhaustive. If you cannot find research on your topic on one database, don't give up and email me right away! Try to vary your search terms and try out different databases first.
What are search terms? Search terms are the words we put into the search bars to help us find information. You will find that I may say "search terms" and "key words" interchangeably. When you start your search queries, pick a set of words that you think will give you results related to the topic you want to explore for this assignment. Try synonyms or similar words if your first search doesn't give you good results.
For this assignment I am asking you to use the topic you have selected already to find an effects study. One of the things I'll be looking for is whether you selected an effects study or not. Use our in-class lecture and the assigned reading to help you determine whether the article you find is an effects study or not.
Read two or three studies and pick the one that fits the best with your topic (or is the most interesting) to write an article summary.
Your article summary should include the following components:
- What was the hypothesis, thesis, or research question(s) posited by the researcher?
- What was the most important information you got from the literature review?
- How was the research study structured?
- What was the most interesting part of the results?
- What was the most important information you got from the discussion of the results?
Your article summary should be 1-2 pages in length (double spaced, times new roman, 12-point font, 1" margins, APA style, APA in-text citations, APA reference).