TED Talk Videos Research Articles

Growth of a viral phenomenon: Development and testing of a new methodological framework

Virality or the viral phenomenon refers to the rapid growth and adoption pattern of a product, akin to a biological virus. Whilst evidence of viral success exists in the literature, the measurement of viral success remains underexplored. The exponential growth measurement approach, although popular, has limitations of being a single measure technique. This paper develops a comprehensive methodological framework to empirically measure the viral phenomenon and thereby to identify and differentiate a viral phenomenon from popularity. The concept of spike and peak is introduced to understand the viral diffusion pattern. The high performers are tested for viral growth rate using the curve fitting method. Process mapping to a considerable time-period characterizes the phenomenon at different life stages. Data from TED talk videos test the framework, and Twitter data validate the TED talk results. The paper concludes with a discussion on the significance of the results for product managers and the marketing industry.

Developing navigation graphs for TED talks

TED Talks is one of the most well-known online video providers. However, current TED displaying system is not efficient in helping users to “navigate” among videos. This study utilizes optimization techniques to help users to develop their navigation graphs thus to find TED Talks videos effectively. The synthesized graph representation encodes the visual metaphors among these videos and keywords to enable visual navigation onto a global overview. Such a navigation graph not only allows users to explore the entire collection of videos and keywords, but also supports seeing–sailing–selecting processes for understanding and intuitive guidance for navigation. Our experimental evaluations explicate that the proposed system is more effective and faster than other presentation structures in helping users to explore their preferred materials.

From Impairment to Empowerment: A Longitudinal Medical School Curriculum on Disabilities.

All physicians will care for individuals with disabilities; however, education about disabilities is lacking at most medical schools. Most of the schools that do include such education exclusively teach the medical model, in which disability is viewed as an impairment to be overcome. Disability advocates contest this approach because it overlooks the social and societal contexts of disability. A collaboration between individuals with disabilities, educators, and physicians to design a medical school curriculum on disabilities could overcome these differences. A curriculum on disabilities for first- and second-year medical students was developed during the 2013-2014 academic year and involved a major collaboration between a medical student, medical educators, disability advocates, and academic disability specialists. The guiding principle of the project was the Disability Rights Movement motto, "Nothing about us without us." Two small-group sessions were created, one for each medical school class. They included discussions about different models of disability, video and in-person narratives of individuals with disabilities, and explorations of concepts central to social perceptions of disability, such as power relationships, naming and stigmatization, and disability as identity. According to evaluations conducted after each session, students reported positive feedback about both sessions. Through this curriculum, first- and second-year medical students learned about the obstacles faced by individuals with disabilities and became better equipped to understand and address the concerns, hopes, and societal challenges of their future patients. This inclusive approach may be used to design additional curricula about disabilities for the clinical and postgraduate years.

Science communication and dissemination in different cultures: An analysis of the audience for TED videos in China and abroad

Disseminated across the world in more than 100 languages and viewed over 1 billion times, TED Talks is a successful example of web‐based science communication. This study investigates the impact of TED Talks videos on YouKu, a Chinese video portal, and YouTube using 6 measures of impact: number of views; likes; dislikes; comments; bookmarks; and shares. In particular, we study the relationship between the topicality and impact of these videos. Findings demonstrate that topics vary greatly in terms of their impact: Topics on entertainment and psychology/philosophy receive more views and likes, whereas design/art and astronomy/biology/oceanography attract fewer comments and bookmarks. Moreover, we identify several topical differences between YouKu and YouTube users. Topics on global issues and technology are more popular on YouKu, whereas topics on entertainment and psychology/philosophy are more popular on YouTube. By analyzing the popularity distribution of videos and the audience characteristics of YouKu, we find that women are more interested in topics on education and psychology/philosophy, whereas men favor topics on technology and astronomy/biology/oceanography.