SOCI 411: Social Movements: Home
Strategy
Think carefully about what kinds of information will exist for your movement.
Is your movement very local and involving a narrow group of people? Or is it regional, national, global? Is it so big that you need to narrow your focus?
When did your movement happen? Is it ongoing? Is it officially over, or unofficially over? Is it easy to identify the movement's roots, or not?
Your answers will help you think about what will be available. Is your movement too new for peer-reviewed articles or scholarly books? Are there a lot of primary sources that should be available? What about books? Will there be documentaries or other video content?
Take your movement and search in many different places for it. Try the article databases, catalog, newspapers, documentaries, and look for oral histories and other collections using Google.
Public Opinion
- Roper Center's iPollOffers extensive database of opinion poll datasets. Roper’s iPOLL allows searching at the question level. The Center archives national opinion polls back to 1935, both U.S. and some international polls. Holdings include survey results data from academic, commercial and media survey organizations such as Gallup, Harris Interactive, Pew Research Associates, ABC, CBS, Wall Street Journal and many more. Many datasets are available for instant download in ASCII or SPSS format. Datasets not available for immediate download may be requested from the Center to be queued for digitization.
NOTE: First time users to NEW Roper iPoll need to self-register for access at login. Your credentials from Classic iPOLL will NOT work without new registration as of 8/14/2020. Classic iPOLL will no longer be updated after Sept 1, 2020.
UNC catalog search
UNC Filmfinder search
Scholarly articles
- Sociological AbstractsCore sociology journals. Not great for new movements. FOR FULL TEXT: USE FIND@UNC BUTTON.
- Academic Search PremierCore database of journals in all fields, magazines, and some major newspapers. When all else fails.
- PAIS IndexPublic policy, social policy, general social sciences.
- Communication and Mass Media CompleteBest for articles about the media.
- JSTORMultidisciplinary journal database. Good for older movements. Coverage of last 5 years is very limited.
- Mobilizationscholarly journal
Current Issues
These sources are all good for relatively recent national issues and movements. They provide readable summaries, present both sides of an argument, and cite a number of sources.
- CQ ResearcherThe CQ Researcher is the perfect answer for people beginning research on current topics. It covers the most current and controversial issues of the day. From Abortion to War, each issue gives you a comprehensive review of the controversies, historical background, chronology of important events, opposing views from experts on the subject, and extensive bibliographies for additional research.
- Issues and Controversies on FileContains full text articles on current topics of interest, arranged in opposing points of view. It is intended to give users a quick grasp of the essentials of more than 250 controversial news topics. It also contains chronologies, illustrations, maps, tables, sidebars, bibliographies and contact information.
- Pros & Cons of Controversial Issues"Mission: Promoting critical thinking, education, and informed citizenship by presenting controversial issues in a straightforward, nonpartisan, primarily pro-con format."
- Points of View Reference SourceProvides students with a series of essays that present multiple sides of a current issue. Essays provide questions and materials for further thought and study and are accompanied by thousands of supporting articles.
Primary Sources
Newspapers can be considered primary sources, since they record what is happening at the time, and often include quotes, opinions or original images. However, there is a variety of other primary sources that can be useful, including the following. Think broadly.
- Autobiographies (look in the library catalog for bios and autobios)
- Oral histories (easy: Google "oral histories" and "occupy movement," for example)
- Twitter (Twitter archives are hard to find past a certain date. Some people will collect them on certain movements, though.)
- Organization websites (Everyone has their own site!)
- Library guides (Google library guide civil rights movement)
- Other free-web collections (Google "archive" or "digital library" and women's suffrage)
- Documentaries (see FilmFinder box on the left)
- College newspapers (look for the DTH archive, for example--back to the 1890s)
- Women & Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000Database of women's activism in American public life from 1600-2000, including published histories, records of women's organizations, books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies.
- #MoveMe from UC Berkeley#MoveMe is a guide to social media activism and social movements. Each section explores the evolutions of social movements, like #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, #NoDAPL, and #Dreamers
Social Sciences Librarian
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