Remain authentic and actively engage viewers
In this context, he says that a well-made video must fulfill similar demands to conventional journalism. The difference, however, is that YouTube also has to do with the specific audience and the authenticity of the protagonists. “For example, I wouldn’t use youth slang in my videos just because I’m addressing a young target group,” he is keen to stress. Encouraging his viewers’ active involvement is very important to him: “That’s why my videos often end with questions aimed at motivating people to get to grips with the topic, evaluate it critically and develop their own opinion about it.”
For the most part, Drotschmann is solely responsible for the “MrWissen2go” channel and for creating corresponding content. He chooses the topics, writes the scripts and produces the films in his own basement. According to Drotschmann, it usually takes a week to make a video. In exceptional cases and for topics hot-off-the-press, he can do it in six hours. “But you can spot that because then I’ve also edited the videos myself,” he says. For “MrWissen2go Geschichte”, with its focus on history topics, he works with a team of writers. To conclude his lecture, Drotschmann emphasized the importance of not being carried away too much by a platform’s algorithms. Although dependent on what is shown and gathers clicks on the larger platforms, as a journalist and a contributor to the public broadcasters’ media portfolio it is also necessary, he says, to stay relevant and reliable: A balancing act that Drotschmann – with around 2.4 million subscribers to his channel – evidently manages quite well.
The Knowledge Makers
“Die Wissensmacher” (“The Knowledge Makers”) is a lecture series launched in 2003. It is organized by the Chair of Science Journalism at TU Dortmund University in cooperation with the Medical Faculty and Corporate Communications at Ruhr University Bochum. Every winter semester, around a dozen media experts are invited to TU Dortmund University to hold lectures and give a glimpse behind the scenes of their everyday working lives – for science journalism students, but also for anyone else who is interested.
Lecture series “Die Wissensmacher” (“The Knowledge Makers”)
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