Welcome to Sentinel
Sentinel is built to help users search, compare, and understand the video content shaping public conversation. Here is what the platform does and how to use it.
Sentinel was built in response to the public's growing reliance on video-based content for information.
More people are turning to platforms like YouTube to understand current events, public issues, and cultural debates. At the same time, platforms like YouTube are designed, understandably, to recommend content through metric-driven algorithms. Those systems are effective for content discovery, but they serve a different purpose than helping users understand the full scope of video coverage on a particular topic.
Sentinel's mission is to organize online video content in a way that gives users additional tools to search, compare, and understand what is being said across the video landscape.
Sentinel does not host video content. All videos are displayed through YouTube-compliant iframes, so views, credit, subscriptions, likes, and engagement remain with the original channels that published the content. Sentinel is an organization and analytics platform. Its purpose is to provide additional tools for searching and understanding the video content people watch and rely on for information.
Sentinel provides a suite of search tools that allow users to find specific statements made within video posts. You can search video content in two primary ways:
Channel-wide search
Use this tool to search across a Voice's body of content:
Episode search
Use this tool to search within a specific video episode. Begin by selecting the Voice whose content you would like to search, then use Sentinel's organizational tools to locate the episode:
Sentinel uses the term "Voices" to refer to the individuals and organizations that publish video content online. Sentinel currently includes 210 Voices available for channel-wide search. You can browse the full list here:
This initial list was selected to provide content diversity across a broad range of topics, viewpoints, and formats within politics and social commentary. Sentinel is continually adding new Voices to the platform.
To request that a Voice be added, use the Voice Request form here: