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Phi Theta Kappa Honors in Action

A research guide for the Honors in Action project completed by members of Phi Theta Kappa.

(2020-2021)

Research question: How can individuals gather truthful information from news sources? What role does information literacy or media literacy play in ensuring individuals can seek and find accurate information?

(Based on Honors Study Topic To the Seventh Generation: Inheritance and Legacy)

To target government websites (for statistics or government-funded studies), add site:.gov to your Google search.
Try the Directory of Open Access Journals for peer-reviewed articles freely available online: https://doaj.org/
If RVCC does not have access to full text of a needed article, use Interlibrary Loan to get it. Ask Janelle or another librarian if you need help.
Search the Internet, use Wikipedia, or utilize one of the library's Research Starter databases to learn more about your topic and look for synonyms and related terms to use in your searches.
Other keywords to try/combine to create complex searches (presented in alphabetical order, not ranked by usefulness):

Accuracy	Gossip
Accurate	"Information literacy"
Authority	Inquiry
Bias	"Media influence"
Censorship	"Media literacy"
"Confirmation Bias"	Misinformation
"Critical analysis"	News
"Critical thinking"	Propaganda
Disinformation	Rumor
Evaluate	Truth
"Fake news"	Website

Recommended databases:

(Some of these may provide scholarly articles while others offer reference articles or popular sources. If you are not sure what kind of source you found, please ask Janelle or another librarian!)

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary EBSCO database offering scholarly and non-scholarly material on a wide variety of subjects.
Subjects include major science disciplines such as biology, chemistry, and physics as well as engineering, psychology, religion and philosophy. It provides access to full text content for many scholarly journals, citations/abstracts for more than 1,000 titles and access to more than 60,000 videos from the Associated Press.
Communications & Mass Media Collection (Gale) This link opens in a new window
A Gale database that contains full-text articles from over 350 journals and streaming videos on all aspects of the communications field including topics on advertising, broadcast journalism, communication engineering, editing, graphics, information technology, linguistics, marketing, public relations, publishing, sports commentary and photography.
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) This link opens in a new window
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) is an authoritative database of indexed and full-text education literature and resources supported by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement and is administered by the U.S. National Library of Education (NLE).
It contains more than 1.6 million records and links to hundreds of thousands of full-text documents including journal articles (most of which are scholarly), books, conference papers, curriculum guides, policy papers and more. Through the EBSCO interface, it provides an education-specific thesaurus that includes controlled vocabulary.
Information Science & Library Issues Collection This link opens in a new window
This Gale database covers topics in library and information science.
It is a collection of over 350 information science and technology periodicals covering topics in library and information science including managing and maintaining information, information technology, cataloging, usability, circulation and business. It is updated daily from leading journals such as Bookseller, Journal of Database Management, Teacher Librarian and Wired.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context This link opens in a new window
This Gale database provides information covering today's hottest social issues. It contains pro/con viewpoints, magazine & newspaper articles, scholarly journal articles, reference articles, and more.
This Gale resource provides more than 20,100 pro/con viewpoints covering today’s hottest social issues and more than 19,200 reference articles, including topic overviews, charts and graphs, and statistical information. It contains over 300 profiles of federal agencies and special-interest groups and offers a dedicated portal focused on the annual debate topic determined by the National Speech and Debate Association. It provides access to full-text newspapers and periodicals from multiple perspectives, including National Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Commentary, and CNN Wire. This is a great resource for background research on topics to gain different perspectives.
RVOneSearch This link opens in a new window
RVOneSearch provides access to most of the information contained in many of the library's databases plus the RVCC library catalog.
It is a great place to begin your research with select key words to obtain a list of articles available throughout multiple databases as well as books, ebooks and websites accessible through RVCC’s library. Many limiters are available to modify your search such as full-text only, peer reviewed (scholarly), specific date ranges, or a specific database or source type.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
This Elsevier database provides mostly full-text access to over 14 million scientific, technical and health publications from over 3,800 journals and more than 35,000 books.
Some articles have citation and abstract information only. This is a good source for scholarly articles in nursing, psychology and the sciences.