Category: Academics

Cal’s Media History journals: a guide

An historiography assignment asks for comparisons of historical arguments on a given subject. Focus your search on academic/scholarly articles rather than journalism or other popular press sources. Make sure you are searching scholarly databases. That will make finding material to compare easier and the sources more authoritative.

Step 1. Look at history-focused articles in the academic press in Cal’s university library. Log in and narrow your search to academic journals and peer-reviewed on the left hand side of the library menu. You are looking for journals with writers who debate media history subjects. (FYI: you might need to use the library proxy VPN if off campus). You might also use Google Scholar to explore potential articles for comparison using these steps.

Step 2. Open the journal and search some aspect of media history you would like to explore. For example, you might be interested in the history of women and media. So, one would search within the journal for anything that mentions these subjects. Articles will always be historical in these journals, so I find this article:

Television—the Housewife’s Choice? The 1949 Mass Observation Television Directive, Reluctance and Revision by Helen Wood.

I would then quickly examine the argument as outlined by the abstract. Then, I would continue searching abstracts of other articles (or book chapters) with key words related to TV, Housewives in the post-WWII era. Once I find one that addresses the same subject, I would analyze how the pieces differ in approach, argument, types of sources used, and any assumptions the authors bring to the analysis of postwar women and TV.

A Google Scholar search for keywords “Cold War Film Propaganda” shows a number of potentially comparable research articles. You would likely need to use your library database (or an on campus computer) to get access.

Step 3. Next, I would look at the abstract. That is the summary at the beginning. If I like it, I put it aside for later reference. Before reading the full article, I would examine the abstracts of other articles addressing the same subject and time period (authors writing about women and media in the 1940s or WWII film propaganda). Find two that seem to speak to one another in topic. The two authors may make similar or contrasting central arguments, but your task is to examine how they differ in argument, historiographical perspective, methods or archives used, etc. In the process, summarize the authors’ arguments, referencing the primary sources and methods where relevant.

That should be a good primer to point you in the right direction to do some basic historiography.

Basic Research Summary

Basic Research Summary

Teachers use research summaries to get students acquainted with the current arguments on a topic in an academic field. So, they inform us about a topic, but they also teach students to see the methods researchers use to make arguments. It can be a lesson on evaluating evidence.

There are two kinds of summaries. One is a “deep” and one “lite.”

Deep summaries not only outline the research in a study but also contextualize the research. For example, the summary of an article on consumption in America after World War II would also include references to other historians who have studied the period for comparison. Book reviews are a kind of deep summary.

Lite summaries focus on the information and arguments in the study. These are “lite” because they are shorter and do not contextualize the research. They are useful as quick reference when assembling a literature review or annotated bibliography.

For either type of summary, there is a common procedure in assessing the research you summarize.

First, scan the research. What is the main hypothesis or argument? What evidence did the researcher use? What are the key findings? (5 min)

Next, read the piece well and take notes on important features that may be important for a summary. (20-60 mins)

Once you are familiar with the argument, methods and conclusions, write the summary. Use the following overview to guide your writing process.

Light Research Summary Elements

  • APA style citation info as title
  • Introduction – offer a brief overview of the topic and its importance; include a concise description of the research questions or hypotheses pursued by the study’s authors. Finish intro by outlining the main argument/findings.
  • Methodology –  detail experimental methods and/or the type of primary evidence used to make the argument (e.g. types of experiments, surveys, historical sources, sampling, statistical analysis, etc.).
  • Results section – describe how the data/evidence led the researchers to their conclusions.
  • Conclusion/Discussion – interpret the results, theoretical models, the study strengths and limitations. What are the implications of the arguments made? How do the findings , conclusions, etc. Arguments and findings are revisited and validated or denied, based on how convincing the evidence is.