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TED Talks: What Makes Ideas Worth Spreading?
Madeline M. Rost
Augsburg University
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TED Talks: What Makes Ideas Worth Spreading?
One of the most amazing things about humans is our ability to think. We can think about
simple thoughts and ideas or more complex ones. And thanks to the power of communication
(both verbal and nonverbal), we have the ability to share our thoughts and ideas with others.
There are quite a number of people on our little blue planet, so there are a lot of ideas loosely
floating around out there, but sadly not everyone has to chance to share their thoughts and ideas
with others. Now what if there were a space in which passionate speakers could have an
opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas? Luckily for the thinkers of the worlds, such a
space exists.
In 1984, Richard Saul Wurman observed a confluence among three different fields:
technology, entertainment, and design. The first ever TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)
talk, co-founded by Harry Marks, included a demonstration of the compact disc (also popularly
known as CDs), the e-book, state of the art 3D graphics from Lucasfilms, and Benoit Mandelbrot
demonstrating how to map coastlines with his developing fractal geometry theory (“History of
TED”, n.d.). However, the world was not ready for TED just yet.
The event ended up losing money and it took time for Wurman and Marks to try again.
Fast forward to 1990. The world was now ready for TED. The TED Conference became an
annual event in Monterey, California. The conference drew in a growing and influential
audience from differing disciplines. Audience members were linked by their curiosity and open-
mindedness (“History of TED”, n.d.). At these conferences, more than 50 talks are given over the
course of a week. The subject of these talks includes the original fields of technology,
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entertainment, and design, and has slowly expanded to include ideas from any discipline, all to
explore how everything connects (“Conferences”, n.d.).
As time went on, the list of presenters expanded to include scientists, musicians,
philosophers, religious leaders, and others. For those in attendance, TED became an intellectual
highlight of the year, especially for media entrepreneur Chris Anderson. Meeting with Richard
Saul Wurman in 2001 to talk about the conferences future, Chris Anderson made a deal that led
to TED being acquired by his nonprofit Sapling Foundation. In making the conference nonprofit,
Chris Anderson kept true to what made TED great: the format, the content, and the mission to
seek out intriguing individuals and allow them an opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas
with the world (“History of TED”, n.d.).
Soon it became clear that the ideas shared at TED could have an impact far outside of
Monterey. The time between 2001 and 2007 saw big additions to TED. One being TEDGlobal, a
sister conference held in locations through the word. The TEDPrize, which gives its winners one
wish to change the world (“History of TED”, n.d.). And lastly, TED Talks, an audio and video
podcast series that is able to accessed online for free. A number of program and initiatives
followed throughout the years, including: TEDx, a program that helps independent organizers
create TED-like events in their communities (“TEDx Program”, n.d.), TED Active, TED Fellows
program, TEDMED, TED Translator, TED-Ed, and TED Radio Hour. In 2012, TED Talks
celebrated the enormous milestone of having its one billionth video view. The website now has
over 2600 talks for people to view and share with others (“History of TED”, n.d.).
Learning about the humble beginnings and the expansion of TED over time made me
curious to learn more. For my research project, I decided to dive in and analyze what TED talk
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videos do to persuade people to watch their talks, listen to the ideas presented in them, and share
the videos with other, along with analyzing any patterns among TED talks.
Research Questions
I proposed eight research questions, four of which dealt with the technicalities of the
videos and the other four dealing with more specific details of the speech.
RQ1: Will one year have produced more videos than other years?
RQ2: Will more speeches take place at official TED Talk events than unofficial TED
Talk events?
RQ3: Will shorter speeches be more favored than longer speeches?
RQ4: Will speeches about technology, entertainment, and design (the speech topics TED
was originally founded on) be more popular than other topics?
RQ5: Will a majority of the speakers use citing a paper, study, or survey to start their
speech off and capture audience attention?
RQ6: Will more speakers move around the stage as they speak or will they be static?
RQ7: Will most speakers use physical, handheld notes during their speech?
RQ8: Will most speakers use a presentational aid during their speeches or forgo them?
Sample
To gather a sample of videos for my research project I went onto TEDs official website
(www.ted.com) and started to browse through the +2600 videos available. I directed my attention
to already complied playlists in an effort to find a more concise sample size. I found a playlist
titled “The most popular talks of all time” a playlist containing 25 videos. I decided to use this
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playlist as my sample because 25 videos provided a large enough sample size without being too
overwhelming and unwieldy, along with showcasing examples of tried-and-true TED talks.
Method
To help organize the data I found and answer my research questions, I created eight
different categories that correlated with my research questions. The first category looked at what
year the speeches were recorded, typically given in an informational section under each video.
Years for this category ranged from 2004 (the earliest year found) to 2017 (the last full calendar
year). The second category looked at event type, given again in the informational section, and
was broken down into either official or unofficial TED events (all of which operate under license
from TED Talk). The third category pertained to speech length, with possible time frames
ranging from 0-10 minutes, 10-20 minutes, and 20+ minutes. The fourth category dealt with
topic tags for the video. Appropriate topic tags for each video were again found in the provided
informational section. After collecting all the topic tags used in the 25 videos, I put the combine
total of 89 tags (videos can have multiple tags) into a word generator to properly sort out and see
any frequencies among the tags. The fifth category looked at what techniques speakers used to
start off their speech (audience engagement, personal anecdote, quotation/citation, explanation of
what they will be talking about, or a combination of techniques). I designated the one minute
mark to be the end of the start of the speech. The sixth category looked at the speaker’s
movement in the space they were given (static or fluid). Fluid movement was defined as taking
more than 5 full steps in any given direction at a somewhat constant pace. The seventh category
looked at speakers use of physical, handheld notes (notes or no notes). The eighth category dealt
with presentational aid use (yes or no). This category had a subcategory of types of
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presentational aids used (PowerPoint, prop, audience member(s) participation, poster board,
video, or combination). For each TED Talk of my sample, I analyzed it through the scope of
each of the eight categories created.
Analysis of Results
Now having the results of my data, I proceeded to answer my eight questions. The results
of my findings were most expected, but some findings turned out to be a surprise.
RQ 1: Will one year have produced more videos than other years?
A: The first category looked at what years the videos of the most popular TED talks were
recorded. Of the 25 videos: no videos originated from 2005, 2014, and 2017. The years 2007,
2008, 2010, and 2016 all saw one video being recorded. 2004, 2006, 2011, and 2015 saw two
videos being recorded. And 2009 was the most popular year, with a total of seven videos being
recorded. I was most surprised about how many more videos 2009 had recorded compared to the
others.
RQ2: Will more speeches take place at official TED Talk events than unofficial TED
Talk Event?
A: My second category looked at event type. 19 of the 25 talks were from official TED
events, with the remaining six being from unofficial TED events. Of the unofficial events, five
were TEDx events, and the other was a TEDMED event. This was not a surprising find at all, but
it was nice to see that some of the most popular TED talks of all time were from independent
organizations.
RQ3: Will shorter speeches be more favored than longer speeches?
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A: My third category looked at speech lengths. I found that five videos were in the 0-10-
minute bracket, 15 videos in the 10-20-minute bracket, and the last five were in the 20+ minutes
bracket. I was surprised that people seemed to prefer more medium length speeches more than
shorter ones.
RQ4: Will speeches about technology, entertainment, and design (the speech topics TED
was originally founded on) be more popular than other topics?
A: The fourth category I dealt with looked at the topic of the speeches themselves. The
most used topic tag was culture (11 uses), followed by psychology (eight uses), science (also
eight uses), then brain (seven uses), and business (six uses). The rest of the topics uses are
20%
60%
20%
VIDEO LENGTHS
0 to 10 minutes 10 to 20 minutes 20+ minutes
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summarized in the following chart:
Table A summarizes topic tags that only had two uses, and Table B summarizes topics that were
only used once.
Table A
Table B
Communication
Decision-
Making
Introvert
Africa
Fear
Goal-setting
Visualizations
Parenting
Beauty
Fish
Productivity
Consciousness
Potential
Design
Life
Depression
Relationships
Sociology
Global
Sex
Evolution
Entrepreneur
Work-life
Issues
Language
Storytelling
Children
Marine
Society
Exploration
Humanity
Oceans
Success
Open-source
Identity
Online
Choice
Performance
Illusion
Poetry
Comedy
Personality
Internet
Speech
Mental
Photography
Medicine
Aging
Books
Friendship
Teaching
Crime
Magic
Innovation
Animals
Dance
Body
Leadership
Balance
Sound
Mind
Cognitive
Fashion
Video
Self
Curiosity
History
Data
Time
Education
Illness
Demo
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Culture
Science
Business
Health
Writing
Creativity
Technology
Biology
Social
Frequency of Topic Tags
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I was actually surprised that the three speech topics that TED was originally founded on were not
the most popular.
RQ5: Will a majority of the speakers use citing a paper, study, or survey to start their
speech off and capture audience attention?
A: My fifth category pertained to what techniques speakers would use to start of their
speeches. Audience engagement (chatting with them, asking direct questions, etc.) was used four
times. Using a personal anecdote was used nine times. Quoting or citing a study, survey, etc. was
used once. Simply explaining what their speech will be about was used twice. And a
combination of the techniques was used nine times. I was surprised to see that personal
anecdotes and the combination technique were the preferred method starting off a speech, rather
than citing a paper, study, or survey.
RQ6: Will more speakers move around the stage as they speak or will they be static?
A: My sixth category looked at how the speakers utilized the space of the stage. It was
found that 19 of the speakers were more fluid and moved around the stage, while the remaining
six speakers were very static and did not move around at all.
16%
36%
4%
8%
36%
Starting Techniques
Audience Engagement
Personal Anecdote
Quotation/Citation
Explanation
Combination
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RQ7: Will most speakers use physical, handheld notes during their speech?
A: My seventh category dealt with the uses of notes during the speeches. I found that
only three speakers used notes, and the remaining 22 did not use notes at all. I was actually quite
surprised about the number of speakers who chose to not use physical notes.
RQ8: Will most speakers use presentational aids during their speech or forgo them?
A: My eighth category looked at use of presentational aids. I found (just like use of
notes), that only three speakers went without presentational aids, and 22 speakers used some
form of presentational aid. Of the presentational aids used, 15 of the speakers used a PowerPoint,
one speaker used only a prop, one speaker only used a video, and one speaker only used a poster.
The remaining four speakers used a combination of presentational aids. Two speakers utilized
both a prop and a PowerPoint, one speaker used both a PowerPoint and bringing up an audience
member to participate, and the last speaker used audience participation and a video. I was not
surprised by the overwhelming use of presentational aids. I was however, surprised that
PowerPoints were the preferred choice of presentational aid, especially when compared to the
other type of aids used.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
PowerPoint
Prop
Poster
Video
Combination
Presentational Aids
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Discussion
One of the hardest parts of my research was thinking of research questions to ask and
answer. It took some time to think of questions that other people would be curious about and
hopefully match up with what they look for in the TED talks they want to watch and share. That
is why I decided to have half of my research questions deal with the technical side of the talks
that may draw them in and the other half of my research questions deal with the inner details that
will (hopefully) persuade people to continue watching and (again hopefully) share the talk with
others. Instead of having such an even division of questions, I could’ve focused my questions
either all on the technical aspects, or focused solely on the inner details of the TED talks.
Another hard part of my research was deciding on an appropriate sample for this project.
The TED talk website (at this moment) has over 2600 talks available so there was a number of
different sample pools that I could’ve used instead of the 25 most popular TED talks of all time
that I eventually decided to use. Further research on TED talks could analyze videos pertaining
to only one specific topic, or only analyze videos that were recorded in a specific year, or
analyze videos only from official TED Talk events. The sample possibilities that can be used for
research related to TED Talks are endless, especially considering the fact that new talks are
uploaded each weekday.
I ran into some coding and categorizing issues, especially with the research
questions/categories that dealt with the inner details of the videos. The hardest one to code and
categorize was the techniques that speakers used to start their speeches. It took some time to
create categories that would be exhaustive of all of the starting techniques found in the sample
used. Placing videos into the correct category was tricky and required multiple re-watches of all
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the TED talks used to ensure that I was truly was placing each video in the appropriate starting
technique category. That is also why I set the end of the start of the speech at the one minute
mark, just to ensure that I would have time go back and do multiple re-watches for each TED
talk.
Another coding and categorizing issue I had was for the category of speaker movement.
It took some time to figure out what the criteria for fluid movement would be. Once I figured
that criterion out, it took (again) multiple re-watches of each TED talk to see if they were truly
moving in a fluid fashion or were being very static.
Going along with the topic of coding, having either one other person or multiple people
analyze TED talks with me could’ve easily changed the categories used, along with where each
video was placed in the different coded categories. This in turn could’ve changed the results of
the data analyzed.
Once I figured out my coding and categorizing issues and analyzed the rest of my data, I
found it easy to structure and organize the results of my data analysis so that it would be quite
simple to translate it all into a straight-forward and understandable research paper. I strived to
make sure my writing was in-depth and detailed enough to give a clear picture of what I did
through my research project, but also not so dense that potential readers would become bored
while reading. I kept detailed writing in mind especially when completing the research questions,
methodology, results, and analysis sections of the paper, as these are the most important sections
of research papers.
It is important to note that the research done for this paper is not attempting to indicate
any causation of what make TED talks so popular, as that would require a methodology suitable
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for explanatory research, as opposed to this study, which is descriptive in nature. Rather, this
research wanted to look more into patterns among TED talks, along with seeing what they do to
persuade people to watch the talks, actively listen to the ideas presented, and share the talk (and
the ideas in them) with other people.
