Using EBSCOhost’s Communication and Mass Media Complete Database
- How to get to the database:
- Go to Miller Library’s online resources page:
- Click on “EBSCOhost Academic” link
- Scroll down and check the box next to Communication & Mass Media Complete
- Click “continue”
- Searching
- Limiting your Results
- Check the boxes beside
- Full Text – This provides instant access to the entire text of the article
- Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals – This will limit your results to high quality, academic articles
- References Available – This allows you find articles that list the author’s sources and citations so that you can find additional useful articles.
- You can also limit your results by date of publication
- Searching
- I suggest an initial search (using the above limiters) for your sub-field: example – mass media.
- This will give you an idea of how many potential articles there are.
- At this point, if you have too many resources to deal with, you can add an additional search term, using BOOLEAN OPERATORS (and, or, not)
- AND - combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example, education and technology finds articles that contain both terms.
- OR - combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. For example, education or technology finds results that contain either term.
- NOT - excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example, education not technology finds results that contain the term education but not the term technology.
- Using AND or NOT will provide a smaller amount of results, while using OR will provide a larger amount.
- Enter your additional search term using a Boolean Operator
example: mass media AND culture
- At this point, once your results have become more manageable, you can begin to browse the articles or narrow them down even further.
- To narrow the results even further, scan the “Narrow Results By” column on the left side of the screen.
- You can narrow the search down by subject, company, publication type, geography, industry terms, and specific publication. Just click on the term you want to add.
- Using Thesaurus Terms to create a precise search:
- Click the thesaurus tab at the top of the page
- Using the thin search bar, enter your topic term
- Identify any useful terms
- Click on the term to view broader, narrower, and related terms
- Check any that are relevant and click “Add”
- You can create strings of search terms by connecting with AND, OR, NOT
- Selecting and Using an Article
- Click on the title of an article to view the information for that article
- You will be able to the title of the article, the author(s), the publication information, subject terms, and abstract.
- Try reading the abstract first. It will give you a summary of what the article is about. You can then decide if the entire article is worth reading or if you should move on to another one.
- If you decide to read the entire article, click on the PDF Full Text link.
- One you view the article, you can choose to print it, save it, email it, etc.
- Click “Citation” to return to the article information page
- You can click on the folder icon to save interesting items to a folder. You can check you folder by clicking on the link at the top right. (Note that these will only be saved for the duration of your current search. You can sign up for an account that will allow you to save folders that can be returned to later.)
- If you click on the yellow paper icon, you can bring up a list of citation formats – you can copy and paste the one that you will use. DOUBLE CHECK the format to make sure it is correct.
- You can also check their references by clicking on the Cited References link.
- Any blue link will take you to additional items
Example: clicking on the author link will take you to any other works written by them that are stored in the database.
- Click on the HELP link in the upper right corner for links to tips
- Contact Matt Upson at if you have any questions.