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Popular sources fulfill countless information needs that are not scholarly in nature, such as providing news, supplying quick facts and information, supporting hobbies, showing how to do things, providing entertainment, etc. For example, suppose you want to find out the results of a recent election, or you want to see who starred in the TV series White Lotus, or you need to learn how to repair a light fixture. Respectively, you might consult a newspaper article, a website like IMDb.com, or a YouTube video – all of which are considered popular sources. Below is a list of sources that are typically considered to be popular:
Newspapers
Magazines
Websites (meaning website-sources)
Non-scholarly books
Media such as videos, podcasts, TV shows, etc.
Unlike scholarly sources, popular sources are characterized by being easy to read and understand. Furthermore, popular sources are likely to be of interest to lots of people, not just other scholars or experts. So, the audience for popular sources is typically much broader than the audience for scholarly sources.
Here you see Smithsonian Magazine in its online form. This is a good example of a popular source.
And below you see a YouTube video from the 'Weird History' Channel. This video is a popular source.
You should be aware that some popular sources are rather terrible and contain useless, inaccurate, misleading, sensationalized, or downright false information. Below you see some examples.
Using popular sources sensibly
Using popular sources sensibly
You just saw that some popular sources can be terrible. That means you need to exercise caution using popular sources, since the quality of information found in these sources can be highly variable and range from excellent to downright false.
Suppose, for example, you are writing a research paper about the increasing public demand for companies to use more environmentally sustainable practices. In the course of your research, you come across a popular source – the website of an oil company. The website has lots of information about how the company is working to be environmentally sustainable in order to mitigate their negative effects on the environment.
Then suppose you found a journal article written by a team of ecology and environmental engineering faculty at a university. The journal article describes how these researchers investigated claims made by oil companies about their environmental sustainability practices, measured against the actual practices the companies engaged in. They found that oil companies (including the same oil company whose website you just looked at) greatly exaggerate their claims to be sustainable and deliberately avoid opportunities to mitigate their effects on the environment.
Which source would you be more likely to believe? The claims made on the company's website, or the evidence provided by the study the scholars did? Obviously, you should be wary of the claims made on the company's website. It's in the company's interest to try to look as good as possible and stretch the truth to the extent they think they can get away with it. So, here's a case where you need to be very careful about information provided from a popular source.
QUESTION 1. You can always trust what you read on the official website of a company, organization, or news agency.
true
false
Should you avoid using popular sources?
Should you avoid using popular sources?
After all, some are awful and none of them are scholarly. But, then again....many popular sources are both AWESOME and very, very useful.
In fact, whether you should be using popular sources or not completely depends on your particular information need.
For example, if you want to know who starred in the Mission Impossible movies, you could look all day long and not find the answer in source that's scholarly or peer-reviewed. However, it would take only a few seconds to find the answer in either of the popular sources (IMDb or Wikipedia) shown to the right.
Here's another reason NOT to avoid popular sources. Let's say you were researching how mainstream media portrayed the rise of rap music. To study this, you'd HAVE to collect, examine, and cite popular sources, because that's what mainstream media consists of (newspapers, magazines, broadcasts, etc.). In a case like this, it would be absurd to avoid popular sources.
So, just because a source doesn't have qualities that make it scholarly or peer-reviewed doesn't mean it's useless or bad.
On the other hand, if you are working on a class assignment where you are required to only use scholarly sources, then you'd want to think twice about choosing a research topic where popular sources are likely to have most of the information you need to write your paper. Hopefully that makes sense?
QUESTION 2. Since popular sources are not scholarly, it's always a good idea to avoid using them – just to be on the safe side.
true
false
What's next?
What's next?
Answers to questions on this page:Question 1. falseQuestion 2. false
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