YouTube is filled with billions of videos. While many videos are truthful, they can usually get sidelined by videos with unreliable or fake information. Thankfully, YouTube now ensures that fake information is not pushed to the masses, and more reliable channels are shown to the viewers. Here are the various sources you should refer to while gathering data for your next YouTube video.
1. Research papers
You can always use research papers to support the thoughts you put forth in a video. Research papers usually have multiple highly educated authors and are also reviewed by others who are well-versed in that field. You can find research papers on most topics under the sun at Google Scholar and at academic libraries.
2. News media
Another excellent source of data is the media. This includes newspapers, magazines, journals, news channels, podcasts etc. While these have a lot of information, not all of them can be reliable. There are several national as well as international media sources that tend to show biased or even fake news, so always do a deep dive into any of the latest news for your research. Some reliable news sources are BBC, The Economist, and New York Times.
3. Digital libraries
Much like research papers, you can even find published books to source your content from. And finding these books has never been easier, thanks to digital libraries. You can browse through millions of books online in academic or government-based digital libraries across the globe. In fact, universities like Carnegie Mellon and Cambridge provide public access to their collections.
Recognising an unreliable source
- As you do your research, you might come across conflicting information from two or more sources. Verify these against data from reliable sources to weed out the unreliable ones.
- Check the website name and any indications of biases in the content. For example, a drug company might recommend more of their own products in a medical article.
- Check the publisher of the article and its legitimacy on the domain. You might not want to source medical information from a website that mainly covers financial data, right?
- For current affairs, look for the revision dates to ensure that the data is up-to-date. Certain topics might have had more progress in recent times that you won’t find in older articles.
Creating an informational video can be a huge responsibility. Your facts should always be true and up-to-date to build credibility for your channel. Always use the sources mentioned above, or similar ones to create the most impactful videos.
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