Although most of YouTube seems to be videos of cats doing stupid things, you may occasionally come across something that you want to cite in an essay. As such, in this blogpost, we’re looking at how to cite a YouTube video in Harvard referencing.
Citing a YouTube Video in Harvard Referencing
Since a YouTube video does not have an author in the conventional sense, you can instead cite the title and the year it was uploaded:
The presence of the word ‘male’ in ‘female’ is actually a coincidence (Words That Seem Related, But Aren’t, 2016).
It’s more unusual to quote a YouTube video directly, but when you can do this by giving a timestamp for the part of the video you are quoting:
According to Arika Okrent in Words That Seem Related, But Aren’t (2016, 00:00:10), ‘there’s no “male” in “female”’.
For example, the citation above shows that the quote is taken from ten seconds into the video. The reader would then be able to look up the video, skip to the cited section, and find the quoted material.
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The Reference List
Any YouTube video cited in your work should also be added to the reference list at the end of your document. The format here is as follows:
Title of Video (date uploaded) YouTube video, added by Username of uploader [Online]. Available at URL [Accessed date].
For the video cited above, for instance, the correct reference would be:
Words That Seem Related, But Aren’t (2016) YouTube video, added by Arika Okrent [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f_3PNlkaKs [Accessed 8 November 2016].
A Quick Note on Harvard Referencing
Although many universities use ‘Harvard referencing’, there’s not one universally accepted version of this system. As such, you should check your style guide to confirm the format preferred by your university