ANTH 2140 - Media Assignment

This guide is to help you with your media assignment for ANTH 2140. Here you'll find research help, recommended library resources, tips for finding resources online, and citation information.

Don't forget that you can always contact your librarian, Brenda, for help!

Reminder that your class must include five articles/news releases including:

• an article from CBC news
• an article from an Indigenous source
• a news release from a First Nations Community or the Assembly of First Nations
• a news article from a mainstream newspaper

Thinking of a topic might be difficult. Try browsing one of the Indigenous news websites listed on the websites tab to get an idea of what topics are available if you are stuck. You can also scroll through your regular news outlets or social media: what is being talked about right now? Your topic must fit under one of the following general themes:

1. Health and Wellbeing (Medical Care, Child Welfare, Unhoused)
2. Justice (Policing, National Inquiries, Human Rights)
3. Economic Development & Resource Extraction (LNG, Pipelines, Mining, Forestry, Transportation)
4. Education

Too big of a topic will quickly overwhelm you with sources. You may need to narrow down your topic. Think about what aspects of the topic are currently being discussed in the media. Maybe a politician recently made a comment that sparked a debate, maybe a new piece of evidence was revealed, or maybe new actions are being taken.

How is your topic being talked about in the media? Think about:

• colloquial language: how would people refer to a concept in day-to-day life?
• is there a particular phrase that keeps being used and discussed in different contexts?
• synonyms for your topic/terms
• other aspects of your topic: the news might be more interested in one part of your topic than another
• important people of your topic
• tone differences: you might think "respectful protest," but a headline might read "attackers of..."

Thinking outside the box and using these points to think about your topic will help you search for sources more effectively.

Searching on the internet can find a variety of sources. Google is your best bet to find Indigenous-run sources

Google Tips

• Not many, but some library techniques will work in Google: use quotation marks for phrase searching; use OR (must be all caps) to search synonyms or related terms
• Choose News then Tools to find some limiters: you can sort by most recent or only results from the last week
• Don't feel limited to news results: websites like Wikipedia can be a great place to get an overview of a topic and gather some vocabulary words for searching
• Google has come to an agreement with the Government of Canada re: the Online News Act so Canadians can continue to access news via Google
• To search articles from CBC News Indigenous via Google, run your keyword search and then click on Tools > Advanced Search (under the search box). Then, under "site or domain" put: cbc.ca/news/indigenous. Run your search.

Indigenous-run media sources

It can be difficult to find Indigenous voices in mainstream media. Several of the links under Canadian Alternative News Sources are Indigenous-run. In particular, check out:

News Releases

Check the websites for First Nations communities and/or the Assembly of First Nations for "News" sections. Each community calls this different things. Possible sections include News, News & Events, News & Reports, News & Updates, It may be a top level page, or under a section such as "About Us" or "Research." You may need to poke around a bit.

Screenshots

Anything on the internet might change from day to day. Take screen captures of tweets, comments, online news articles...anything that could change or get deleted.

• Windows: ctrl-alt-print screen OR Fn+print screen OR use the snipping tool.
• Mac: shift-command-3 OR shift-command-4

The browser plugins below are useful because they will capture the whole webpage you are on (instead of taking a screenshot, scrolling down, taking another, etc.)

Below are your two best bets for finding news articles in the library. These databases have different kinds and amounts of Canadian news.

Why use a library database to find news articles when everything is online? Online news is convenient, but it is less stable than a library database--articles can be taken down or changed over time. Using database features, you can make the list of results very relevant, something that is more difficult to do online. We will demonstrate this more during our workshop.

Nexis Uni (formerly known as LexisNexis Academic) has full text articles from newspapers from around the world, including Canada, from national papers to small local papers like Alaska Highway News (Fort St. John). It contains mostly mainstream media. It has some Indigenous-run media sources, such as Windspeaker.

Tips for searching Nexis Uni:

• Use the main search bar
• You can use advanced search techniques in the search bar like quotation marks, AND/OR, and parentheses.
• Use the switch labeled Group Duplicates to hide identical articles
• View results by relevance, but also sort Newest to Oldest to find the latest news and Oldest to Newest to find first time anything about the story appeared
• Use the limiters on the left side of search results. For example:
  • Sources by Location to see where the story spread around the world (NOTE: Canada is listed under International)
  • Sources can give you an overview of which individual publications are publishing about this topic.
  • Timeline to see how much was published over time
• Do not save the URL of an article from the address bar. Instead, use the instructions below on how to link to articles

Search alerts are not available for this database. However, you can create a "link to this page" that you can then rerun whenever you want:

• Click Actions at top of the search results screen and then on "link to this page"
• Copy and paste the link somewhere safe
  • Don't forget to add https://go.openathens.net/redirector/tru.ca?url= in front of the URL!
• Click on the link regularly to see what's new. Be sure that the sort is set to "date newest" to see what's new.

1. Search Nexis Uni for an article of interest and select the title to open the full text.
2. Click on the link icon at the top of the page.
3. On the resulting popup box, select the full URL, and copy the entire link.
4. Before pasting the URL into Moodle, add this prefix to the front of your link: https://go.openathens.net/redirector/tru.ca?url=
5. In this example, your share link will now look like this:  https://go.openathens.net/redirector/tru.ca?url=https://advance.lexis.com/api/permalink/659dcb82-af1a-4fa8-a9a5-fe4ca315f55c/?context=1519360&identityprofileid=4WQG6R38761
6. Copy the modified share link and paste it into Moodle. Do not upload PDFs directly as this violates licensing restrictions.

CBCA Complete includes Canadian news content, including CBC transcripts and magazines. However, it does not have smaller/local publications, so smaller stories may not have as many resources in this database.

Tips for searching Canadian Newsstream:

• Sort results by "Most Recent First" to find the latest news
• Use the limiters on the left side of search results. For example, Publication Name can give you an overview of where news is coming from.

Search Alerts: You can set up an alert that will send you an email with newly published materials that match your search. Once you have created a good search:

1. Click Save search/alert on the top right of your results list.
2. Choose Create alert.
3. Fill out the form with your email. I recommend including search details (so you remember what your search was), sending weekly, and sending the alert even when no new documents match your search (so you remember!).

CBCA Complete includes Canadian news content, including CBC transcripts and magazines. However, it does not have smaller/local publications, so smaller stories may not have as many resources in this database.

Tips for searching CBCA Complete:

• Sort results by "Most Recent First" to find the latest news
• Under Source Type, you can exclude sources you don't need. For instance, scholarly journals and dissertations & theses are not relevant for this assignment, and you may have found most newspapers in LexisNexis.
• Use the limiters on the left side of search results. For example, Publication Name can give you an overview of where news is coming from.

Search Alerts: You can set up an alert that will send you an email with newly published materials that match your search. Once you have created a good search:

1. Click Save search/alert on the top right of your results list.
2. Choose Create alert.
3. Fill out the form with your email. I recommend including search details (so you remember what your search was), sending weekly, and sending the alert even when no new documents match your search (so you remember!).

Headline & Tone:

• What is the tone of the headline?
• Which (if any) use more sensational or emotional language? Why?

Framing:

• How does each source frame or “spin” the story?
• Does the article focus on a legal/economic/political perspective or does it highlights human impact?
• What story "angle" is chosen?
• What are the implicit/explicit assumptions built into this framing/spinning?

Language:

• What specific words are used to describe the people, places, or events? For example, is a protestor referred to as an "activist," "land protector," or "protestor"?
• What are the implicit/explicit assumptions built into this language?

Perspectives:

• Which voices are included or favoured in the story?
• Are Elders, youth, community members, or political leaders quoted?
• Are government or industry representatives given more or less space?

Omission:

• What information is left out of each article? For instance, does one story provide historical context that the other omits?