Start by phrasing your subject or general topic in the form of a question.
Then ask yourself further questions about your topic:
What do you know about it? What don't you know?
What aspects or viewpoints of your topic interest you? Examples include social, ethical, psychological, aesthetic, economic, political, and philosophical.
What time period do the crimes and the narratives cover?
.How does the narrative structure, imply or assume your understanding of the populations involved as actors, witnesses, and readers? (Categories may involve gender, race, class, age, occupation, nationality, etc)
How does your topic fit into a larger system or structure?
What do you need to know about the background of these events? Were they preceded by other events that affected the coverage in the media?. Some selected general and specialized subject sources can help narrow the topic.
Remember, there are two layers of research:
1) a broad search to discover resources and to read some background information
2) specific searches for information once you've focused your topic.
Comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary resource containing a large number of peer-reviewed journals.
This is good place to start for most topics, including all sciences, religion, law, history, psychology, political science, criminal justice, literature, current events, sociology and communications.
Abstracts and full-text for most journal articles; Varies by title many from 1980s-present
Broadest resource of scholarly research on human cultural, social, environmental and political behaviors
Covers a variety of social sciences including: Anthropology, Criminal Justice, Criminology, Economics, Environmental Studies, Ethics, Family Studies, Gender Studies, Geography, Gerontology, International Relations, Minority Studies, Policy Sciences, Political Science, Psychology, Public Welfare, Social Work, and Sociology.; Full-text, abstracts, and citations; Full-text & abstracts: 1995 - present; Citations: 1907 - present
A discovery tool that searches most of the University Libraries' collections, including books, journal articles, newspapers, dissertations, music, and video recordings.