Abstract
The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference and associated website of recorded conference presentations (TED Talks) is a highly successful disseminator of science-related videos, claiming over a billion online views. Although hundreds of scientists have presented at TED, little information is available regarding the presenters, their academic credentials, and the impact of TED Talks on the general population. This article uses bibliometric and webometric techniques to gather data on the characteristics of TED presenters and videos and analyze the relationship between these characteristics and the subsequent impact of the videos. The results show that the presenters were predominately male and non-academics. Male-authored videos were more popular and more liked when viewed on YouTube. Videos by academic presenters were more commented on than videos by others and were more liked on YouTube, although there was little difference in how frequently they were viewed. The majority of academic presenters were senior faculty, males, from United States-based institutions, were visible online, and were cited more frequently than average for their field. However, giving a TED presentation appeared to have no impact on the number of citations subsequently received by an academic, suggesting that although TED popularizes research, it may not promote the work of scientists within the academic community.
Highlights
Scientific communication, previously conducted through print, radio, and television media, is increasing finding outlets online [1]
From the 998 unique individual presenters of the 1,202 TED talk videos examined in this study, 21% were academics (n = 206) and 27% were female (n = 268)
In regard to the first research question, the majority of presenters of the investigated 1,202 TED videos were male (73%) non-academics (79%). This suggests that science popularization is only a small part of the function of TED talks, which includes presentations by technologists, designers, and entertainers
Summary
Scientific communication, previously conducted through print, radio, and television media, is increasing finding outlets online [1]. Other journals, including The Journal of Number Theory and Nature, have used YouTube to provide supplementary information for their articles [4] In this vein, TED may be one of the most successful online producers of scientific and technical videos. Other measures demonstrate the success of TED Talks at popularizing science; it includes entertainmentrelated videos, the TED Talks website is the fourth most popular technology website in the world [6] and the most popular conference and events website [7] These statistics reflect a wide public interest in scientific knowledge; a 2012 survey reported that more than 90% of Americans are moderately or very interested in new scientific discoveries, with the Internet representing the main source of information for learning about such discoveries [8]
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