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The Indiana Daily Student

academics & research

New study looks at TED Talks

caCassidyMUG

New research led by IU has found in a comprehensive study of over 1,200 TED Talks videos and their presenters that only 21 percent of the presenters were academics and, of those, only about one-quarter were women, according to a press release.

“Overall, academic presenters were in the minority, yet their videos were preferred,” Cassidy R. Sugimoto, an assistant professor in IU’s Department of Information and Library Science, said in the release. “This runs counter to past research that has argued that the public, because of a lack of literacy on the subject, has a negative perception of science and technology that has been fostered by the media.”

Sugimoto, lead author of the study, and a team of researchers from Great Britain and Canada explored the demographic make-up of TED Talks presenters, according to the release. Data the researchers gathered from the TED website and YouTube found that male-authored videos on YouTube were more popular than those authored by women. This could be because research has shown females are less likely to comment on YouTube than males, according to the release.

The study found that videos presented by academics were commented upon more often than those presented by non-academics and while YouTube videos by male presenters were more viewed than videos by female presenters, the same could not be said of the TED website, according to the release.

The new study has found positive associations with science and technology and possibly discerning characteristics in the public between presentations by academics and non-academics, according to the release.

“While TED does not increase the impact of work by scientists within the academic community as seen through more citations, it does popularize research outside of academia,” Sugimoto said in the release. “Academics are receiving greater online visibility, but there is no evidence that TED Talks leads to an increase in the traditional metric of academic capital: citations.”

Sugimoto also noted in the release that while viewers commented more on academics videos than non-academics, viewers did not popularize one academic over another based upon age or university affiliation.

“Either university affiliation doesn’t register with or is irrelevant to the online audience, or if it is relevant, it may be offset by those academics from less prestigious universities working harder to be invited to present at TED or have their video published,” Sugimoto said in the release.

The study was called “Scientists Popularizing Science: Characteristics and Impact of TED Talk Presenters,” and appeared in PLOS ONE.

-Makenzie Holland

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