Multidisciplinary resources are a good place to start research on a new topic as they give a good overview of research on a topic from many different perspectives and disciplines.
These databases include core journals in journalism and communication, broadly defined. Using a subject-specific index is useful if you are retrieving too many irrelevant searches in the multi-disciplinary databases.
Use the "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" filter on the search results list to limit results to peer-reviewed articles.
Literature review sections of dissertations and theses can be used to identify relevant articles and books on a topic and research trends and gaps in a specific area; their methodology sections can be used to understand how to approach research questions and to learn about available secondary data.