I’m seeing more and more people claiming to have “done the research” to support some kind of claim, and I suspect most of the “research” there is rather dubious. In most cases, they’re simply saying “I believe the views of person x instead of person y” — and that’s mostly ok. If you trust one source more than another source, there’s nothing wrong with that; just say “I watched a video” rather than “I did my research”.
The problem there is that you are likely being fed inside of a filter bubble of some sort. You’ll find source after source that supports your point of view, even if you’re in the minority. Social media is great at feeding people what they want to see and feeding their confirmation bias, so it’s important to dig past it.
Research it
If you’ve taken the time to really research a subject, tell me about it. Seriously. While I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a researcher by any means, I use some research tools to help with my blog posts as well as my general understanding of various topics.
Are you on the lighter side with a Roam or Obsidian? Or collecting via an extension like Zotero or RefWorks? Or is there a different tool that you prefer to use?
On the back side of that, where are you publishing your results? If the only place you publish your findings is social media, that doesn’t really count. A self-hosted blog like this is a better step, but even that’s not really adequate for proper research. Have you published an abstract or a paper with your findings?
Finding a source that you trust, and then watching and reading what they have to say can be great. Just make sure you’re seeing both sides of the story, and be clear about what level of research you actually did.
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