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Community Media: Research Resources

The Community Media collection and website brings our community together with local media resources that represent diverse interests, ideas, and people.

Using Local Media in Research

Community media and newspapers provide a rich source of information and personal narratives. Local media are produced from perspectives that are unique to geographic region, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, time, place, and political and social context. Newspapers in the Library's Community Newspaper Collection, or the media sources linked from the Community Media website, can be used as:

Primary source - Newspaper articles are significant examples of primary sources, meaning they come from a specific time, group, or geographical location. Primary sources can give researchers a new perspective or can be the subject of research itself.

Popular source - Media sources can provide a popular or independent perspective on a research topic or an issue debated in the scholarly literature. Popular sources can also be a rich subject of research on their own.

Tips for searching for community and local media books

Try a keyword search:

add these phrases: mass media, local mass media, or local journalis*  Tip: The asterisk operates as a wildcard, so the catolog will search for any words beginning with "journalis", such as journalism, journalist, journalistic, etc.

[Community name] AND media (e.g., Native American and media)

[Topic name] AND journalis* (e.g., community and journalis*)

Finding Articles in E-Newspapers

Search for community and local news articles in these full text newspaper databases.  Coverage dates vary.

UW Libraries Search

Featured Web Resource

Scholarly Articles About Media

Looking for research about community and local media (e.g., secondary sources)?  Search within these databases for scholarly articles on these topics.