Academic help! (the more controversial stuff)

[fireheart17]

As I stated in this thread one of my topics at uni this semster is covering social and political issues in Australia, the US and Canada. I have 2 essays and two short tutorial presentations.

unfortunately I know almost NOTHING about Canadian politics, let alone the social issues in Canada. I know at a minimum that gay marriage in the US is on a state-by-state basis and that federally gay marraige is not recognised due to the DOMA act. I know what websites I can use for Australian politics to an extent...

What I'm asking for is help. Basically, reliable sources. In this particular case, I am looking for some very good sources on immigration policy, indigenous rights, anything on national values, even stereotypes of the other countries (one of my tutorial presenations covers those). Newspaper articles, statistical information, any websites specialising in this sort of information and so on. While academic journals are good and all, the problem is that they argue for or against a particular issue, and what I am after, is some more general information. Even just someone explaining it to me here would be a huge help.

Wiki is more my last resort. Also, I'm not sure how reliable THAT information is.


Even if someone could explain a bit more about the stuff mentioned here without sources, at least I can then go from there. Otherwise Iwould be willing to bet that if I typed in "gay marriage in Canada" on Google I would get 4 or 5 websites on anti-gay marriage propaganda.

Thank you!

[AdminAssistant]

Don't use Wikipedia! If you do look something up there, look at the footnotes to see what the source material is..and then go to the source material.

You should really check into peer-reviewed academic journals though. Not all of them are that biased, and if they're peer-reviewed then you know they pass academic muster.

[Greenday]

Use wikipedia! But not as a source. It's generally a good stepping stone to finding actual resources. On the whole, it can be fairly accurate. It'll give you a general basis on the topic upon which you can make other searches. Just don't use it as gospel. Most teachers I had in college would fail you for using wiki as an actual source.

[Kheldarson]

Wiki's a good stepping stone as Greenday said. And don't knock academic journals either. While they may be more specific, they also reference the more generic stuff too.

Here's something on immigration policy in the US: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/70xx/doc7...mmigration.pdf

Standard rule of thumb, according to my history profs at least, when it comes to websites: .edu, .gov, and .org are the most reliable. Anything else, take with a grain of salt.



And you pretty much hit the nail on the head with gay marriage being state decision in the US. And not just from DOMA. There's a pretty good argument that even without DOMA the 10th amendment of the Bill of Rights gives the states power over deciding what is or is not a marriage.

With the stereotype research, you may want to look into the KKK and look into the numbers/movement of illegal immigrants throughout the years in the US. That would give you a pretty broad idea of who it's currently "hip" to diss. (Not that there aren't areas with room to gripe. I student taught in an area that was poor coal country. And with the recession, nobody was happy to see illegals with jobs while they were without. My fun was explaining to middle/early high school students that not all Hispanics were illegal >.<)

[Sleepwalker]

Why not the american and canadian news sites? They have a Politics and Culture section. CNN.com would cover quite a bit of american culture and politics all by itself.

[Boozy]

You should really check into peer-reviewed academic journals though. Not all of them are that biased, and if they're peer-reviewed then you know they pass academic muster.

Besides, the entire point of a humanities curriculum at a university is to teach students research techniques, and that includes learning how to read, filter, and evaluate articles in academic journals.

The point of this paper is not to learn all about gay marriage in Canada. That's probably not information that an Australian university grad is going to find useful in the future. What they want you to do is sift through the myriad of information out there and come up with your own thesis. There's no one resource that will give you information that is entirely accurate and entirely comprehensive. The point of this research paper is to teach you to recognize good evidence from bad.

[AdminAssistant]

Besides, the entire point of a humanities curriculum at a university is to teach students research techniques, and that includes learning how to read, filter, and evaluate articles in academic journals.

Exactly. In terms of American newspapers, the New York Times or Washington Post are probably the top two. You could try checking out CNN, Fox, et.al, but try for paper sources first. You could also try periodicals like Newsweek (I had a professor who really liked it, YMMV.) Definitely avoid things like the Huffington Post. I like it, but it is a liberal blog, and inappropriate as an academic source, IMO.

However, you could find a way to work in sources affiliated with, say, First Nations Rights or PFLAG by saying, "these are the things that these groups are wanting" and so on.

[Andara Bledin]

If you want news articles, you could try going to the major sources and hit ap.org and reuters.com - those are the sites I start with when I'm trying to find less-biased information on any event that is beyond small-town news.

^-.-^

[bhskittykatt]

Everyone has great advice here. For academic journal articles, I love EBSCO and ProQuest. You can check with the library at your school to see if they have an account with those sites, or other similar sites. (My community college has an entire list of logins in the library for these sites and more.)

[jackfaire]

For my research nothing beats the homeless guy on the street. Kidding.

On a more serious note a resource people often over look is people.

Ask people who live in those countries how the laws are affecting them. Gives it a more personal angle being able to include not just the facts but how those facts affect every day life.

My history teacher used to have us speak to people that had lived through different periods in the recent past to help us understand the value of being able to get a first person perspective.