Political Science 211

Do the People Govern? U.S. Public Opinion and Mass Political Behavior
Professor: Matthew Tokeshi
Spring 2018

Research Tip: Searching Newspapers

Searching Full-text Newspapers

  • Think like a journalist. What words would they use?
  • Use the vocabulary in use at the time. (e.g., Negroes instead of African American)
  • Combine synonyms with OR to increase results. (e.g., conservatives OR right-wing)
  • Use the asterisk (*) to get multiple endings of a word. (e.g., integrat* for integrate, integration, integrating, etc.)
  • To get words closer together, use proximity operators. (See the database's help page for correct syntax.)
  • Limit your search to "abstract" or "citation and abstract" (if available) to get more precise results.

Links to individual newspaper titles

Search Tip: limit by date!

When searching news databases, especially Lexis-Nexis, you will find that limiting by date (last 3-6 months is is usually good) for broad general searches on elections or Trump / Clinton. Otherwise, you will be stuck with a 1000-limit list which you cannot sort by "newest first".

Subjects: Political Science