key practices for activist researchers

 

 

peace 071b
simon elichko

  • Generate some research leads by doing a quick     preliminary analysis.
     

  • Use the full range of research tools, resources, and approaches at your disposal - including asking for help!
     

  • Keep track of what you find

 

Three Key Practices for Activist Researchers

Preliminary Analysis

Example:
Anti-hydrofracking protest in Lawrence County, PA. Activists demonstrated outside the gates to a farm that had been leased to a gas company.

Go to this link:
bit.ly/prelim-research-nv

Sign in to Google, then follow prompt to copy the doc. Use your own case, if you have one!

• Quick preliminary analysis •

Start from what you know (from the case description).

• Who?
          Activist group name? (local? chapter of larger org?)
          Farmer's name?  Name of gas company?

• Where?
          Name of nearest larger town/city?

• What?
          What words do activists use to describe the action?
          What about the target?  Opposition more broadly?

• When?

           What relevant date(s) do you know?  
           What else was happening at this time?

Go to this link:
bit.ly/prelim-research-nv

Sign in to Google, then follow prompt to copy the doc. Use your own case, if you have one!

Start filling out the info you have (approx dates, etc.)

Preliminary analysis --> Initial research direction

• Who?
          Social media and web sources from activist group
          Blog posts, press releases from larger organization
          News and other media quoting or referencing the
                    farmer, gas company, and/or activists

• Where?
          Names of local and regional newspapers + media
          Info about other similar actions in the local area

• Keywords and links

       Use to search different sites, including web archives

• When?

          More manageable search results (narrow by date)

Sources + Leads

• Found a Facebook post on the demonstration by a 

  member of the activist group.
          ---> searched Access World News for this person's
                 name, found out that she's quoted in 

                 newspaper articles you hadn't found before

• Read a local newspaper article quoting a gas company
   representative.

          ---> searched for the gas company name,
                 learned that they testified in front of the
                 state Department of Environmental Protection,
                 obliquely referencing the demonstration

Use the full range of research tools and resources at your disposal

  • Access to databases, news sites, books + from the library
    • Lots of resources that don't come up in a general search
    • Can sometimes request PDFs of articles we don't have access to
  • Creative use of search engines
    • Small changes to search terms (e.g. "phrase search", filetype:pdf) can help you find significantly different content
    • Looking up social media posts by using Google prioritizes different results vs. searching in the app
    • Get different results searching in DuckDuckGo, Bing, etc.
  • Use archived versions of websites
    • Get around broken links (sometimes)
    • See older versions of pages as they changed over time
  • Location-specific
    • Mapping sites, including Street View over time (Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, etc.)
    • Satellite imagery in Google Earth
    • User-generated content like reviews (including photos)

Creative use of search engines: Google

Phrase searching

  • Use this when you need to find an exact phrase, or require than a certain word appears on the page
  • Enclose in quotes: "your phrase here"
  • Try putting an organization name in quotes, then add more specific keywords (not in quotes):  "vera institute" pennsylvania

 

Search tools bar (on results page)

  • Limit results by date updated
  • Verbatim mode (results more closely match your exact keywords)
     

Filetype:pdf

Advanced Search panel - see more options

Creative use of search engines

Basic set-up

your keyword site:youtube.com

your keyword site:swarthmore.edu 

 

How to search multiple platforms at once:
railroad strike  site:instagram.com | site:tiktok.com | site:pinterest.com
 

railroad strike  site:reddit.com | site:facebook.com

  • Put the URL immediately after site:  (don’t leave spaces)

  • Leave spaces around the pipe | separating multiple sites.

Creative use of search engines

Edit site URLs to find specific kinds of content:

 

Limit results by date range

 

Creative use of search engines

You can get significantly different search results by searching the same keywords in different search engines, for example:

  • Google
  • DuckDuckGo
  • Bing
  • Perplexity
  • Search engines popular in the country you're researching (e.g. Baidu, Yandex)

Web Archives

  1. Find the website for a newspaper, TV station, or other media outlet based near your case.

  2. Copy the URL.  (e.g. nytimes.com)

  3. Look up the site on the Wayback Machine on archive.org.

Using archived versions of websites can let you:

You’ve likely used Google Maps Street View to see photos of specific locations.

You can sometimes use Street View to see older photos too. For example, compare Philadelphia’s Dilworth Park in March 2012 with Dilworth Park in 2023.

Consider looking up photos of the locations where your cases took place, in case understanding what it looked like (from one vantage point) helps.

 

Maps

Other map services a with street view feature include Bing Maps, KartaView, Baidu Maps, and Yandex Maps. Each service has different geographic coverage. Find more from Wikipedia's List of street view services by country.

Keep track of what you find.

Search logs (see Tools + Worksheets)

Take good notes

• Names (individuals, organizations, agencies)
• Terms used by or to describe people involved
• Any alternative spellings, transliterations, translations


• Locations of importance
• Historical, colonial, or postcolonial names
• Key dates (consider making a simple timeline)

• Legislation, policies - any specific focal point / impetus
• Vocabulary that is characteristic of each side

Reach out!

Look through the PEAC 71B Research Guide

Reach out to Simon for suggestions and advice.

          - Email: selichk1@swarthmore.edu
          - Make an appointment: bit.ly/selichk1