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Communication Studies: Popular Press
Guide content supports the teaching and research goals of multiple departments on campus. Content represents a non-exhaustive selection of essential resources and tools for engaging a wide range of backgrounds and viewpoints.
What are popular press articles?
Differences Between Popular and Academic Resources
| Popular (Non-Scholarly) | Academic (Scholarly) | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Journalist, layperson, or sometimes unknown | Expert (scholar, professor, etc.) in field being discussed |
| Citations | Few or no references/citations available | Includes citations and/or bibliography in certain styles such as MLA, APA, and Chicago (to view citation style guidelines, click on their respective names) |
|
Editing |
Reviewed by people at the publisher |
Reviewed by editorial board of outside scholars (peer review) |
|
Style |
Written for the average reader
|
Written for experts, uses subject-specific jargon, shows research |
| Audience | General public, people in stores/online | Scholars and researchers in the field |
| Advertising | Many ads, often in color | Few or none; if there are any, they are for other scholarly materials |
| Look | Eye-catching/interesting design, many pictures, color | Plain, utilitarian, black and white, tables and charts |
| Contents | Current events, general interest | Specialized research topics only |
| Sample Titles | The New Yorker, The Washington Post, National Geographic | Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Environmental Law |
| Sample Article |
"The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing" - The Atlantic, "Iowa City to launch a year of temporary sculpture installations" - The Daily Iowan |
"Highly Efficient Reprogramming to Pluripotency and Directed Differentiation of Human Cells with Synthetic Modified mRNA" - Cell Stem Cell |
Finding Popular Press Articles
There are a few ways to find popular press articles:
- Search InfoHawk+ and our popular press databases, listed at the right. Use quotation marks around specific phrases.
- Limit your search results to Magazines, if that option is available.
- Consult the references in a scholarly article on your topic. Writers will often utilize both scholarly and popular articles.
- Look at Wikipedia. No, seriously. Scroll to the bottom of the entry on your topic and look at the references. Some are likely to be from popular press sources.
- If you get stuck and can't find anything, it's okay to try a search engine like Google. Look at the URL's to verify that the results are from published media but you may be able to find articles this way. URL addresses that include names like www.newyorker.com or www.hollywoodreporter.com or www.newsweek.com, for example, would all be popular press sites.
Popular Press Databases
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America's News Magazines This link opens in a new windowCoverage of U.S. and international news, business, lifestyle, entertainment, sports, and science and technology from 26 familiar magazines.
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Academic Search Elite This link opens in a new windowThis multi-disciplinary database offers full text for nearly 2,000 scholarly journals, including more than 1,500 peer-reviewed titles. Covering virtually every area of academic study, Academic Search Elite offers full text information dating as far back as 1985. This database is updated on a daily basis.
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Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis) This link opens in a new windowTURN OFF POP-UP BLOCKER; Researchers can quickly and easily search full-text documents from over 17,000 credible sources of information and pinpoint relevant information for a wide range of academic research projects. Extensive legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1790
Newspapers
Newspapers are another valuable source of popular press information. Search the recommended databases below or, on the A-Z Database Index, select Newspaper Collections under All Database Types to search other newspaper holdings, including historical and global.