Film and Media Studies

Think of the various chapters in a book as similar in scope to scholarly articles. You do not have to read a book cover-to-cover to enhance your understanding on a topic. Instead, pick the most interesting chapters to you, ready closely, and trace some of the footnotes/citations which will help you discover more sources to delve a little deeper and identify key scholars and resources. Below are just a few books that might inspire your topic or research, but try UC Library Search or WorldCat for more advanced searching.

Tip: Keywords are the easiest way to search, but sometimes subject headings can really help you to narrow down your results. Here are some examples:

• Cyberspace -- Social Aspects
• Digital Media -- Social Aspects
• Electronic Surveillance
• Technological Innovations -- Social Aspects
• Technology Innovations -- Social Aspects -- United States
• Technology and Civilization
• Technology -- History
• Technology -- Social Aspects
• Internet -- Social Aspects
• Minorities in Technology -- United States
• New Media
• Racism in Mass Media
• Racism in Popular Culture -- United States
• Video Games -- Social Aspects

The library subscribes to/pays for many different multidisciplinary and specialist databases which is the best way to discover and access resources such as scholarly, peer-reviewd research articles, magazine and news articles, trade publications, book reviews, dissertations, and more! 

Depending on your topic, you may want to try searching on various databases as each of them will index (provide information about) different journals and resources. There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to academic research. Although Google Scholar can be a good starting point, it only indexes publications and will lead you back to the library's resources to access the full-text of most articles. I have linked some helpful databases you may want to try searching on to get you started.

Another way to search for scholarly articles is to discover discipline-specific journals and run keyword searches directly within the journals themselves. These are just a few peer-reviewed academic journals related to some of the themes in your course, but you can also try "Journals at UCI" to search for a specific journal title. 

Convergence: the International Journal of Research into New Media (1995)

• Aims to encourage and advance interdisciplinary modes of enquiry into the study of the histories, trajectories, impacts, practices, pleasures and creative potential of contemporary convergent media & allied innovative technologies.

Critical Studies in Media Communication

• A peer-reviewed academic journal covering media and mass communication from a cultural studies and critical perspective. 

C-Theory (1993)

• Peer reviewed. Launched in 1993, this OA journal has published over 600 essays, reviews and interviews. It has not published an issue since 2017.

Crime, Media, Culture

• A peer reviewed, international journal providing the primary vehicle for exchange between scholars who are working at the intersections of criminological and cultural inquiry. It promotes a broad cross-disciplinary understanding of the relationship between crime, criminal justice, media and culture.

Information, Communication & Society (1998)

• Drawing together the most current work upon the social, economic, and cultural impact of the emerging properties of the new information and communications technologies, this journal positions itself at the centre of contemporary debates about the information age.

Feminist Media Studies

• A peer-reviewed academic journal with a transdisciplinary, transnational forum for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of media and communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and analysis of sites including print and electronic media, film and the arts, and new media technologies.

First Monday (1996)

• One of the first openly accessible, peer–reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet.

Media, Culture, & Society

• Provides a major international forum for the presentation of research and discussion concerning the media, including the newer information and communication technologies, within their political, economic, cultural and historical contexts.

Media Theory 

• An online and open access journal of peer-reviewed, theoretical interventions into all aspects of media and communications. Resolutely international and interdisciplinary in scope, the editors encourage submissions that critically engage with the theoretical frameworks and concepts that tend to be taken for granted in national or disciplinary perspectives.

New Media & Society (1999)

• New Media & Society engages in critical discussions of the key issues arising from the scale and speed of new media development, drawing on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and on both theoretical and empirical research.

Social Media & Society (2015)

• A peer-reviewed open access journal that focuses on advancing the understanding of social media and its impact on societies past, present and future. 

Television & New Media

• This journal focuses on exploring questions of how power is expressed through media politics, economics, and cultures. The journal focuses on critical and cultural studies approaches to media and their application across social science and humanities disciplines.

News sources (historical and current) can be excellent sources for your research as they may include quality reporting as well as a variety of voices through opinion editorials on certain issues.  Below are a few US based newspaper sources available online through the libraries, but you can also find many more nationally and internationally by visiting the Newspapers Guide. Did you know? Access the New York Times (NYT) online for FREE, compliments of UCI Libraries!

Why do we cite? It is important to give credit to the intellectual labor of others, and we do this by citing their work through citations in two places: throughout the text (such as in-text citations or footnotes) and at the very end of the text (a works cited or bibliography). The rules for citing vary by discipline -- humanities scholars may be citing differently than social sciences or mathematics scholars -- but they ultimately serve the same goals:

1. A way to tell your readers that certain material in your work came from another source.
2. It gives your readers the necessary information to find that source, if they need to.
3. Helps to continue scholarly dialogue and debate.

Elements of a citation: Most Citations include various information to provide all the details necessary to locate a source.

• Author:  Last, First M. (one author) Last, First M. and First M. Last. (two authors) Last, First M., et al. (three or more authors)
• Title: book, chapter, newspaper, magazine, journal title, website headline, YouTube video title.
• Container: journal, magazine, newspaper, book, online streaming, website, etc.
• Contributor: edited by (when more than one contributor); translated by (when it's a translation from another language)
• Version: Edition (examples: the 2nd ed., updated ed., expanded ed.)
• Numbers: Articles volume and issue number (vol. 40, no. 3) or TV show/podcast (season 4, episode 11)
• Publisher: Name of the publisher (such as a university press) or companies, organizations, agencies, museums that publish content.
• Publication Date: Year (2021) day month year (26 Oct. 2021) season (winter, spring, summer, fall)
• Location: Page range (p. 66 or pp. 25-31), DOI (digital object identifier) with URL

A few helpful resources for citing in MLA (Modern Languages Association) Style Guide:

1. Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) MLA Citation Formatting & Style Guide
   • In-Text Citations: The Basics
   • Formatting Quotations
   • Works Cited Page: The Basics
   • Works Cited: Books
   • Works Cited: Periodicals (Journal Articles, Magazine Articles, News, etc.)
   • Works Cited: Electronic Resources
2. Other LibGuides have very helpful resource pages
   • California State University Library has a nice Quick Guide to Citing MLA 9th edition!

Works Cited: BOOK

Basic Format: Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. City of Publication, Publisher, Publication Date/

One Author:

• Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. Penguin, 1987.

Two Authors:

• Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

Three + Authors:

• Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Utah State UP, 2004.

Works Cited: SCHOLARLY ARTICLES

Format for Print: Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages. 

Format for Online: Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages, URL or DOI. Access date.

• Bagchi, Alaknanda. "Conflicting Nationalisms: The Voice of the Subaltern in Mahasweta Devi's Bashai Tudu." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, vol. 15, no. 1, 1996, pp. 41-50.
• Modugno, Chiara, and Tonny Krijnen. “Through the Black Mirror: Discourses on Gender and Technology in Popular Culture.” Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies , vol. 12, no. 1, 2020, pp. 3–19, https://doi.org/10.1386/cjcs_00011_1. Accessed 24 October 2021.

Works Cited: WEBSITE

Format: Author, or compiler name (if available). Name of Site.  Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), date of resource creation (if available), DOI (preferred), otherwise include a URL or permalink. Date of access (if applicable).

• The Purdue OWL Family of Sites. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2008, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl. Accessed 23 Apr. 2008.

During my presentation, I went over a few fun library perks to know about! Here are the links:

• FREE access to NYTimes.com 
  • Start your account creation process here.
  • Passes are now in a 4-year increment.
• OverDrive Access to recreational reads/eBooks:
  • Start your account creation here.
  • Access over 1,200 books (fiction, non-fiction, curated lists and recommendations!)
• FREE Streaming Media to feature films, documentaries, independent cinema, and more!
  • Browse the Streaming Media LibGuide.