Journal - Week 6

1. Completing my search strategy was a little more difficult that I first thought it would be. I didn’t have too hard of a time coming up with words for “sell,” but I had to change “Iraq War” to “war” so I could at least come up with specifics and synonyms for it. However, when I used these terms to search in the database, I found that some of the simplest terms yielded the worst results for me (i.e. “promote” and “demote”). When I completed this assignment I ran into a couple different search problems, which is explained in detail in the assignment, but just in case I have to write it hear as well, I will:
After completing my analysis of databases, I decided to use Academic OneFile to complete this assignment. When I first started searching I used “Propaganda AND sell AND warfare,” which yielded 1 result which was directly on my topic. Then I searched with “war” instead of “warfare” and I had 4 results, however they were all articles that were of specific world wars and were not of use to my topic. So I changed my search to “Media AND popular opinion AND Iraq” in which I got 2 results that weren’t really useful to me. It was at this point I realized I had other options I wasn’t noticing in the results under the “Magazines,” “Books,” “News,” and “Multimedia” tabs; I was only getting the results from the “Journals” tabs. After realizing this I ventured into the “Magazines” tab and read an article here, only to discover I couldn’t understand what the article was saying at all. Following this I searched for “Persuasion AND Iraq War AND promote OR demote,” “Propaganda AND Iraq War AND promote OR demote,” and “Propaganda AND popular opinion AND Iraq War.” These searches yielded many results under all the tabs but I had to dig through the results to get ones that specifically pertained to my topic.
I decided to use Academic OneFile to do my database search in based on my results from the periodical databases assignment. Even though I searched the every link possible about searching and the databases themselves, I sometimes had to use my best search results to conclude the answers. All in all, it helped me to determine which the better database to use was, and I utilized it to revise my research plan. Although as I’m writing this right now I could have added “Israel,” to my key terms – that sounds like a good one. I also included my changes to narrow my topic, so I hope it meets the requirements now.
2. When trying to determine search words, I ran into the difficulty of not knowing if my words really worked. I tried to add synonyms, truncations, broader terms and narrowed terms, but I still felt like words under “propaganda” and “sell” were somewhat interchangeable; I hope I did it right though. When completing the database analysis, I honestly searched a great deal to try and uncover the answers to the questions. The only one that seemed to be the most difficult to answer was the time coverage of each database. While I could provide a reasonable answer for ProQuest, I couldn’t even attempt to do so for Academic OneFile because it kept freezing whenever I attempted the same search. Plus, if I simply wanted to go to the end of the results of one search, to see the latest date provided, it would take me long periods of time trying to get to the end of 3000 results. In the end, I decided Academic OneFile would the best database search engine for my topic, because ProQuest was more geared towards businesses. This result was surprising to me because it is often referred to for searching purposes. Moving on, I felt my results from the key terms brainstorming activity helped tremendously in my actual search for journals on the database. I found that even when my search yielded smaller results, these results were usually better focused for my topic while many results were usually rarely about my topic. This wasn’t something I noticed before, but I can now know it’s a good thing if I take the time to read what’s provided. These results were beneficial when revising my research plan. I’m still not sure if I should include more terms and if I should include “phrases” (with AND and OR) or just the key terms. However, I know this is still a draft, so I can always add to it when I need to. This week’s results taught me a lot of about searching online, key terms, and databases.