Library & Cultural Services: Sociology: Media. Advertising. Internet

General

See also the Politics subject guide for links to Journalism, Media politics, Fake news, and country specific resources

Comparing Gender & Media Equality Across the Globe (GEM)
Cross-national project based at University of Gothenburg, with an emphasis on use of empirical data. Open access book available.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Established organisation championing freedom, privacy & the public interest in the electronic world, also responsible for Onlinecensorship.org which monitors the censoring activities of companies such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
International Central Institute for Youth & Educational Television
Based in Germany, but includes numerous English language publications on children & the media. Full text of some publications available.
Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE)
Represents the video games industry. Has statistics (2011-) and reports.
International Telecommunication Union
UN agency for information & communication technologies. Offers some free publications, data and statistics.
Mapping Digital Media
Useful series of country studies from the Open Society Foundations (Soros Foundation).
Media Cloud
Open Source platform offering tools for tracking how media stories develop & spread.
Media/Culture.org.au
Respected Australian website offering access to its journal (M/C journal) and a reviews section (M/C reviews).
Media History Digital Library
US based international project to digitise runs of important periodicals, mainly cinema & film, but broadcasting also covered.

Mintel Academic
Mintel Academic gives access to high quality consumer and market intelligence reports and data. These include UK media reports on: newspapers, magazines, books, music, tv, cinema, advertising, children & media, social & digital media

Newsriver
Free API interface for harvesting articles from the internet (excludes Asia, Africa). Webhose.io is an alternative but requires payment
Universal Postal Union
The UPU offers postal statistics for countries around the world from 1980 onwards.
University of Washington Communications & Media Guide
UW has a very detailed & helpful guide to resources for media studies, journalism, advertising, TV ratings & other aspects of communication. Please note that whilst some are free Web resources, others are subscription databases. Please see the University of Essex Library website to check if we have a subscription
World Radio History
Website with an amazing range of resources relating to radio & TV broadcasting around the world

Advertising. Audience & Circulation Data

Note: in addition to some of the sources listed below, newspapers and magazines can be fruitful sources of ads. Refer to the News & Magazines section of the subject guide for details. The resources from Gale and Proquest are digital reproductions of the original publications, and have a filter for advertisements so you can limit results to ads. The filter is available for Gale Primary Sources, Proquest Historical Newspapers, GQ & Vogue magazines (both Proquest).

For broadcast advertising, we have access to Box of Broadcasts which covers mostly UK TV & radio stations. Recordings from commercial channels (such as ITV, Channel4) include advertisements, and you can search by company/brand to pick these up from the transcripts of programmes

Adbusters
Radical network opposed to capitalism as expressed through advertising and in other forms. Closely involved in campaigns such as Occupy Wall Street, Extinction Rebellion, etc.
Advertising Association
Industry body offering some useful free reports online.
Advertising Standards Authority
The ASA regulates the advertising industry in the UK. Free access to publications.
AdViews
Digital collection from Duke University, providing access to thousands of commercials from the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency during the 1950s-1980s
BFI Player - British Advertising on Screen
Interesting free collection of selected British ads, 1900- onwards
Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB)
Body responsible for producing viewing figures for UK television. Some free statistics available on their website. The Library does not subscribe to the BARB database.
Comscore
Commercial site, but does offer some interesting free data & insights on all aspects of media & digital society
Exponent Advertisements
Freely available collection of advertisements with useful search facility, extracted from the Woman's Exponent (Salt Lake City) newspaper from 1872-1914
Facebook Ad Library
Free data on political and other advertising on Facebook and Instagram, and reports on trends.
Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History
Based at Duke University, the Hartman Center contains extensive digital collections relating to US advertising history, mostly 20th century
History of Advertising Trust
The largest archive of British advertising in the world. Material from the 19th century onwards, some available online.
International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulations
Offers some free data on newspaper circulation figures worldwide.
Irish Adverts Project
A treasure trove of TV adverts from the 1960s-1980s.
National Readership Survey
Pamco (formerly National Readership Survey, established 1956), oversees audience measurement for the published media industry in Britain. Some data is freely available
Wikipedia List of US Television Ratings Archives
Highly useful compilation organised chronologically from 1948- that brings together data on audience viewing figures from various sources

Internet. Data

Alliance for Affordable Internet
Investigates the digital divide globally
Center for the Digital Future
Based at USC Annenberg, coordinates the Digital Future project reports (US, annual, 2000-) and the periodic World Internet Project reports (2009-)
Google Trends
Find out what people are searching for on Google. Provides charts showing breakdown by city, region and language. Useful for tracing the impact of a news story.
Institute of Network Cultures
Network of researchers in digital culture, created in 2004 by Geert Lovink. Useful publications, blog, etc.
Internet Monitor
New effort by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society to analyse internet activity and content controls.
Internet Service Providers Association
Body representing UK service providers, seeks to promote innovation, self-regulation & positive development of the internet industry.
Internet World Stats
Contains statistics for internet usage worldwide.
Microsoft Digital Civility Index reports
Annual survey (commenced 2017) across a selection of countries to assess the state of politeness (& lack of) on the Web
Our Data Our Selves
Interesting look at the social & political implications of the ways in which our personal data is used in the 21st century.
Oxford Internet Institute
Useful research & publications available. See also the Computational Propaganda Project.
Value of the Web
Google backed project aimed at illustrating the economic value of the internet worldwide.
World Wide Web Foundation
Organisation seeking to eradicate the digital divide & make the Web available to all. Notably its Web Index attempt to measure the impact of the WWW around the world.

Social Media

Centre for Analysis of Social Media
UK based research centre (led by DEMOS) with international reach.
Twitter Advanced Search
Twitter Data
Zuckerberg Files
Maintained by UW-Milwaukee Center for Information Policy Research. Free access to over 900 statements, transcripts of speeches and videos from Facebook’s founder covering the period 2004-2018

You may be able to make use of existing datasets taken from social media. UK Data Service, UK National Archives and Harvard Dataverse are some of the places that host datasets. Third party platforms such as Google Social Search, Media Cloud, and Social Searcher can offer limited free data.

Social Media Analysis Tool (SMAT)
Easy to use tool developed by Mozilla, enabling users to compare social media activity over time and across various platforms