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READ REVIEWS WRITE A REVIEW CORRESPONDENCE: [email protected] DATE RECEIVED: January 29, 2016 KEYWORDS: ted, science communication , © Chawla This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and redistribution in any medium, provided that the original author and source are credited. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London. Completed September 2015. Special thanks to Dr Felicity Mellor for all her guidance and suggestions. 1. INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND ABOUT TED AND RELEVANCE OF THE STUDY You’ve managed to squeeze your 20 years of work into an 18-minute talk. You feel like you must have recited it to yourself at least 1000 times. You’re nervous thinking about the hundreds of people, who have paid to come watch you speak today, yet you’re not being paid a single penny. You’re wondering if it will be worth it. But it’s your duty to communicate your work, and surely you will benefit from its wide dissemination. You talk. The audience laughs. It goes well. People are giving you a standing ovation. You take a bow, shake hands with the organiser and walk out of the spotlight. But it’s not as simple as that. Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) inaugurated as a conference in 1984 that looked at the convergence between technology, entertainment and design. But the talks now cover almost all topics in more than 100 languages (TED, n.d.). In line with TED’s mission of disseminating “ideas worth spreading” in talks that are usually 18 minutes or less, hundreds of independent organisers have begun organising their own programmes, called TEDx events (TED, SCIENCE AND SOCIETY Textual analysis of science-related TED Talks DALMEET SINGH CHAWLA Doing a TED talk has become an important criterion on an academic’s career checklist in recent years. But critics, such as Benjamin Bratton, have recently condemned TED for oversimplifying talks, and prioritising its entertainment value over the legitimacy and accuracy of its content. Bratton’s outburst has led to a flood of reports about TED in the mainstream media and scholarly literature. Researcher Giuseppina Scotto di Carlo, in particular, has published many papers on TED. In this dissertation, I analyse the 25 most viewed science-related TED talks to date. Specifically, I examine the presence of hedging— a process by which claims are made tentative by words like “maybe” or “might”. I find that a surprising number of my sample talks have hedges, which may partly be because most speakers of my sample talks are academics, who are used to writing scholarly research papers, which are extensively hedged. Next, I investigate the presence of counter-arguments; I find relatively few counter-arguments considering researchers religiously include alternative viewpoints in research papers. Next, I discover that many of my sample talks undermine alternative viewpoints by rendering them as myths, giving science authority over other forms of belief. Then I consider the presence of speakers’ personal narratives in their talks. I find quite a few personal narratives are present in my sample talks, which either progress throughout the course of talk, or are present in the form of a few words, or snippets, that depict the speakers’ personal experience of their talk subject. Finally, I interpret the performative aspect of my sample talks; I look particularly at props and visual tools that speakers use. Props turn out to be rare in my sample talks, and visualisations, when present, connote discourses of nature being perfect, humans as vulnerable or ignorant, and science as meddling. CHAWLA The Winnower JANUARY 29 2016 1

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Page 1: Textual analysis of science-related TED Talks · Textual analysis of science-related TED Talks DALMEET SINGH CHAWLA Doing a TED talk has become an important criterion on an academic’s

READ REVIEWS

WRITE A REVIEW

CORRESPONDENCE:[email protected]

DATE RECEIVED:January 29, 2016

KEYWORDS:ted, science communication

,© Chawla This article isdistributed under the terms ofthe Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 InternationalLicense, which permitsunrestricted use, distribution,and redistribution in anymedium, provided that theoriginal author and source arecredited.

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an MSc in Science Communication at ImperialCollege London. Completed September 2015.Special thanks to Dr Felicity Mellor for all her guidance and suggestions.

1. INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND ABOUT TED AND RELEVANCE OF THE STUDY

You’ve managed to squeeze your 20 years of work into an 18-minute talk. You feel like you musthave recited it to yourself at least 1000 times. You’re nervous thinking about the hundreds of people,who have paid to come watch you speak today, yet you’re not being paid a single penny. You’rewondering if it will be worth it. But it’s your duty to communicate your work, and surely you willbenefit from its wide dissemination. You talk. The audience laughs. It goes well. People are givingyou a standing ovation. You take a bow, shake hands with the organiser and walk out of thespotlight.

But it’s not as simple as that. Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) inaugurated as a conferencein 1984 that looked at the convergence between technology, entertainment and design. But the talksnow cover almost all topics in more than 100 languages (TED, n.d.). In line with TED’s mission ofdisseminating “ideas worth spreading” in talks that are usually 18 minutes or less, hundreds ofindependent organisers have begun organising their own programmes, called TEDx events (TED,

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

Textual analysis of science-related TED TalksDALMEET SINGH CHAWLA

Doing a TED talk has become an important criterion on an academic’s career checklist in recent years. But critics, such as BenjaminBratton, have recently condemned TED for oversimplifying talks, and prioritising its entertainment value over the legitimacy andaccuracy of its content. Bratton’s outburst has led to a flood of reports about TED in the mainstream media and scholarly literature.Researcher Giuseppina Scotto di Carlo, in particular, has published many papers on TED. In this dissertation, I analyse the 25 mostviewed science-related TED talks to date. Specifically, I examine the presence of hedging— a process by which claims are madetentative by words like “maybe” or “might”. I find that a surprising number of my sample talks have hedges, which may partly bebecause most speakers of my sample talks are academics, who are used to writing scholarly research papers, which are extensivelyhedged. Next, I investigate the presence of counter-arguments; I find relatively few counter-arguments considering researchersreligiously include alternative viewpoints in research papers. Next, I discover that many of my sample talks undermine alternativeviewpoints by rendering them as myths, giving science authority over other forms of belief. Then I consider the presence of speakers’personal narratives in their talks. I find quite a few personal narratives are present in my sample talks, which either progressthroughout the course of talk, or are present in the form of a few words, or snippets, that depict the speakers’ personal experience oftheir talk subject. Finally, I interpret the performative aspect of my sample talks; I look particularly at props and visual tools thatspeakers use. Props turn out to be rare in my sample talks, and visualisations, when present, connote discourses of nature beingperfect, humans as vulnerable or ignorant, and science as meddling.

CHAWLA The Winnower JANUARY 29 2016 1

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n.d.). TED has faced some backlash from critics, but despite its shortcomings, it has become a globalphenomenon worth around $45 million (Merchant, 2013).My particular interest in TED was sparked out of the millions of views its videos get; TED talks havebecome so mainstream that it’s as if it is on an academics’ careers to-do list (Kaplan, 2014). Writingin The New Yorker, Journalist Nathan Heller (2012) says that TED’s product is “sophisticated,popular, lucrative, socially conscious, and wildly pervasive—the Holy Grail of digital-age production”,whilst other media companies that are trying to trade in ideas are “struggling to stay afloat”.

This dissertation will therefore explore the hybrid genre of TED talks, arguing that science-relatedTED talks recruit stylistic techniques from both science popularisations and research papers toconvey their message effectively. LITERATURE REVIEW OF TED

In 2013, Benjamin Bratton, an associate professor of visual arts at the University of California, SanDiego and a TED critic, gave a TEDx talk about why the phenomenon of TED does not work (Bratton,2013). For Bratton (2013), too little of what is promised in TED talks is actually realised. The firstproblem with TED, says Bratton (2013), is over- simplification. “This is beyond popularisation. This istaking something with substance and value and coring it out so it can be swallowed without chewing,”Bratton (2013) says. His second problem with TED is that it suggests that if we talk about world-changing ideas enough, the world will change, which is, for Bratton (2013), not true. Instead of“Technology, Entertainment, Design” he suggests TED should be called “middlebrow, megachurch,infotainment” as speakers use a “combination of epiphany and personal testimony” or “epiphimony” todraw viewers in (Bratton, 2013). Bratton says speakers take the viewer through their “personaljourney of insight and realisation”. Bratton (2013), however, questions what TED’s audience gets outof the talks: “A vicarious insight, a fleeting moment of wonder, an inkling that maybe it's all going towork out after all? A spiritual buzz?”After The Guardian republished its transcript, Bratton’s talk went viral (Bratton, 2013; Rasulo, n.d.).His talk is an “earnest and honest assessment of what Bratton deems a serious problem”,according to the Huffington Post (Grenoble, 2014). Slate magazine, on the other hand, describesBratton as “a little intense”, but acknowledges that he makes some valuable points (Newman,2014).

Similarly, science writer Martin Robbins (2012) writes in New Statesman, “TED Talks are designedto make people feel good about themselves; to flatter them and make them feel clever andknowledgeable; to give them the impression that they’re part of an elite group making the world abetter place.” In line with Bratton, Robbins (2012) rebrands TED’s slogan from “Ideas worthspreading” to “Ego worth paying for”.

Earlier that year, sociologist Nathan Jurgenson (2012a) tweeted: “I feel like I am the only person in mydemographic that doesn’t like TED talks.” He reported receiving an “overwhelming” number ofresponses from other TED critics (Jurgensen, 2012a). The biggest complaint he received, accordingto an article he later wrote for The New Enquiry, is that TED smells of “corporatism” (Jurgensen,2012b). “TED’s ‘revolutionary ideas’ mask capitalism as usual, giving it a narrative of progress andchange,” tweeted Mike Bulajewski in reply to Jurgenson’s tweet (Jurgensen, 2012a). At TED, saysJurgenson (2012b), “everyone is Steve Jobs and every idea is treated like an iPad”. This argumentalso raises concern about the popularisation process in general, as the intent of popularisation shouldbe to disseminate knowledge, as well as to convey the usability of this knowledge in people’s lives(Rasulo, n.d.). Rasulo (n.d.) therefore argues that TED should provide arguments and room fordiscussion “where knowledge itself is under scrutiny”. In response to Bratton, TED’s curator Chris Anderson (2014) wrote a rebuttal that was also publishedin The Guardian. In his account, Anderson (2014) notes that when questioning if TED talks

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oversimplify complex topics, you have to consider what people would be doing otherwise; the answeris unlikely to be reading books, taking evening classes or reading scientific papers, he says. Anderson(2014) goes further to state that TED’s aim is to reach a broader audience, and asserts the need formultidisciplinary thinking in a world where “everyone is buried too deeply in their own trench and haslittle visibility of what is going on elsewhere”. He ends by declaring that Einstein’s words are TED’sguide: “Things should be made as simple as possible. But no simpler.”

Bratton’s criticism has also led to a surge of academic papers on TED, especially from GiuseppinaScotto di Carlo, a scholar from The Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples, Italy. Sciencepopularisations have conventionally focussed on a three-point triangular communication space,which Scotto di Carlo (2014a, p.121) calls a “meeting point” between scientists, the public andmediators, who are usually journalists. For Scotto di Carlo (2014a), however, TED is a new form ofpopularisation, as its videos breach the ‘scientist-mediator-audience’ triangularisation by puttingscientists directly in contact with the audience, eliminating the middlemen. TED talks should be seenas re- contextualisation rather than translation, she says, as TED’s approach is different to theapproach of some other popularisations that try to ‘translate’ scientific discourse into everydaylanguage, which “raises a barrier between the scientific community and the audience” (Scotto diCarlo, 2014a, p.122). As part of TED’s model, scientists are brought more into contact with their audience, and thus theircredibility has to be established on the spot (Scotto di Carlo, 2014a). The speakers, Scotto di Carlo(2014b) says, reinforce the appeal to ethos by demonstrating that they have a shared set of idealsand social values as the audience. They, therefore, gain credibility in the audiences’ minds by tellingshort stories and showing “first-handed emotive involvement in what s/he is talking about”, Scotto diCarlo (2014b, p.84) argues. This, she adds, is “beyond mere authoritativeness and reputation; thesestories touch the audience’s inner chords, and thus it is more likely that they will believe the speakeron an interpersonal level” (Scotto di Carlo, 2014b, p.85).

Scotto di Carlo (2015a, p.24) says appeal to pathos is also an essential part of TED talks, as itestablishes a sense of similarity between the speaker and the audience, creating an “emotionalglue”, which helps the audience remember a speech that is of “emotional importance” (Trevarthen,1992). Appeals to pathos in TED talks may, for example, reflect on the speakers’ personalexperience of their topic. Scotto di Carlo (2015a) analysed neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor’s TEDtalk, “My stroke of insight”, the most viewed science-related TED talk to date, which is about herpersonal experience of having a stroke and how it changed her life. “Her authenticity reveals who sheis as a person: a vulnerable human being beyond her professional role,” Scotto di Carlo says (2015a,p.32). Taylor also provides reasons why she is talking about her “personal epiphany” and how it canmake a difference to peoples’ lives (Scotto di Carlo, 2015a, p.32).

In another analysis, Scotto di Carlo (2014c) classifies adjectives in 1386 TED talks conductedbetween 2006-2012, and finds that, similarly to fiction, speakers use adjectives to emphasise the‘uniqueness,’ ‘rarity’ and ‘originality’ of their results. The majority of the adjectives, according to Scottodi Carlo (2014c, p.9), are personal opinions, especially “aesthetic appreciation and emotivereactions”. In traditional scientific papers, which Scotto di Carlo (2015b, p.218) calls “canonicalscientific texts”, however, personal opinions are rare. This feature of TED talks, according to Scotto diCarlo (2014c), humanizes the intellectual experience.Scotto di Carlo (2014c, p.4) also analyses use of metaphors, anecdotes and similes in TED talks,which narrow the gap between “the abstract world of science and the tangible world of everyday life”.The study reveals that TED talks contain a “carefully crafted repertoire of similes”, which are aimed atbroad, non-expert audiences (Scotto di Carlo, 2014c, p.13). This, says Scotto di Carlo (2014c), allowscomparison of complex scientific topics to everyday concepts that lay persons can engage with,

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breaking the knowledge barrier between experts and non-experts.

In order to explore the role that humour plays in TED talks, Scotto di Carlo (2014d) evaluated the 25most-viewed TED talks from 2006-2012 listed under the “funny” category on TED’s website. Meyer(2000, p.317) calls humour the “lubricant”, which allows speakers to gain greater credibility, but saysthat humour can also ruffle feathers and cause “social friction and conflict” and refers to this as the“double-edged sword of humour” (Scotto di Carlo, 2014d). Moreover, Nerhardt (1977, p.47) arguesthat humour is generated as a result of discrepancies between a perception of something that isexpected and another that is not, and calls this humour from “incongruity”. In her sample, Scotto diCarlo (2014d) found 360 occurrences of humour, 105 of which are humour as a result of incongruity.Humour emanates from the notion that people often expect science communication to be serious,Scotto di Carlo (2014d) says, but TED speakers nevertheless add unexpected humour to their talks.Caliendo and Bongo (2012) suggest that TED videos may be considered as a new hybrid genre, asthey contain features of both scientific research papers and popularised texts. TED talks oftencontain a certain degree of colloquialism and informality, when compared to traditional scientificresearch papers, which are more formal (Caliendo and Bongo, 2012). TED talks also differ fromother forms of popularisations, since transcriptions, translations, a blog and a comment areaaccompany its videos. These features, Scotto di Carlo (2015b, p.202) says, give TED talks“phenomenon of genre and modality mixture”.

Sugimoto et al (2013) investigated the characteristics of TED presenters, and their study reveals thatTED speakers are predominantly male and non-academics; however, videos by academics werecommented on and liked more times on YouTube. The majority of academic presenters were seniorfaculty members from institutions based in the United States, who were cited more frequently thanthe average in their field (Sugimoto et al, 2013). But giving a TED talk did not result in a highernumber of citations from fellow academics, which suggests that, “although TED popularizes research,it may not promote the work of scientists within the academic community” (Sugimoto et al, 2013).Likewise, Tsou et al (2014) found that commenters were more likely to discuss the presenters’characteristics on YouTube, but tended to stick to the talk’s content on the TED website.Commenters were also found to be more “emotional”, with positive or negative remarks, on videospresented by women (Tsou et al, 2014).

It is thus evident that despite its apparent deficiencies, TED talks deploy a number of sophisticatedtechniques including appeals to ethos and pathos, figurative language such as metaphors, similesand anecdotes as well as unexpected humour to successfully engage audiences. TED’s hybrid genreoperates by drawing characteristics from science popularisations as well as scholarly papers.Although TED plays a role in popularising research, there is no evidence to suggest that itdisseminates research effectively amongst academics themselves.

LITERATURE REVIEW OF SCIENCE POPULARISATION

The above analyses were not confined to any particular topic of talk, but my focus in this dissertationwill be on science-related TED talks. The culturally-dominant view of popularisation of sciencesuggests that popularisation is a two-part process: first, scientists discover ‘pure’ or ‘genuine’ scientificknowledge, then popularisers disseminate simplified versions to the lay public (Hilgartner, 1990). Anydifferences between the genuine and popularised accounts are therefore due to “distortion” or“degradation” of the original findings (Hilgartner, 1990, p.519). Grundmann and Cavaillé (2000, p.353)refer to this concept of science leading a life of its own, sheltered from other aspects of public life, the“modernist canonical model”. This notion implies that there is a clear-cut distinction between specialistand popularised texts.

This unambiguous demarcation has, however, come into question by some scholars (Cloître andShinn, 1985; Hilgartner, 1990; Scotto di Carlo, 2014a). Hilgartner (1990, p.519), for instance, argues

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that this dominant view “suffers from conceptual problems, and greatly oversimplifies the process”.He goes further to say that popularisation is at best “appropriate simplification,” and at worst“pollution” from outsiders such as journalists (Hilgartner, 1990, p.519). Cloître and Shinn (1985, p.31-32), on the other hand, argue that rather than there being a clear demarcation between popularisedand unpopularised texts, all works lie on “a sort of expository continuum”, which range from“specialist, inter-specialist, pedagogical and popular articles”. I will refer to this as the “spectrum ofpopularisation” in my analysis. The aim of scientific popularisations is to ‘accommodate’ original findings published in researchpapers to make them more accessible to lay audiences (Fahnestock, 1993). Scientific popularisationshave two main forms of appeals, which Fahnestock (1993, p.20) calls the “wonder” and “application”appeals. The “wonder” appeal may, for example, render findings important by suggesting that theyhave “never before” been observed, and by associating it with categories that have related valueswith the audience (Fahnestock, 1993, p.20). The application appeal, on the other hand, would look todraw out the ‘imagine what could happen’ sort of connotations, giving something value on the basisthat it may hold useful future applications (Fahnestock, 1993).

Popularisations, however, face the ‘double pitfall problem’ that Einstein previously pointed out(Fahnestock, 1993). This is the idea that when popularising a piece of work, one has to either concealthe core of a topic and thus deceive the audience, or convey the exact findings, which the untrainedaudience will not be able to follow, and will therefore stop engaging (Fahnestock, 1993). Scientificresearch papers usually draw conclusions from evidence rather than making speculative statementsor value judgements (Fahnestock, 1993). Using Latour and Woolgar’s (1979) classification ofscientific facts, Fahnestock (1993) suggests that the forensic genre of academic papers renders thework tentative by including type 2 and 3 statements, which highlight its limitations and calls for furtherresearch to be done on the topic. Conversely, popularised science articles in the media usuallyadhere to an epideictic genre, proclaiming a greater degree of certainty of the topic beingcommunicated by using type 4 and 5 statements that portray the work as more believable. Fahnestock(1993), however, notes that there is always some epideictic rhetoric present even in technical papers.She goes further to state that scientific papers are deliberately “hedged” by scientists to stress thepresence of any limitations, and prevent their value judgements from creeping in into formal literature(Fahnestock, 1993).

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND CORPUS

My sample talks is the 25 most viewed TED talks listed under “science” in the “topics” tab on the TEDwebsite. In what follows in the next chapter, I first discuss the presence of evidentiary hedging of mysample talks, as indicated by the presence of type 2 or 3 statements that draw attention to thetentative status of the claims made. As I stated earlier, popularised texts usually tend to removehedges that are present in original research papers as placeholders of caution (Fahnestock, 1993).The key difference here, however, is that Fahnestock (1993) analysed accommodated articles thatwere constructed by journalists, whereas speakers of most science-related TED talks in my sampleare the academics themselves.

Next, I consider the presence of counter-arguments. As I mentioned earlier, Fahnestock (1993) saysa feature of science popularisations is that they miss out contradictory evidence. Mellor (2003, p.22)analysed popular physics books and found that “science is constructed as mysterious, imaginativeand intellectual — a transcendental means to ‘truth’ ”, whilst other forms of beliefs, such as magic,are rejected. Rendering magic as “meaningless” results in its denigration, even though physics isitself portrayed as magical (Mellor, 2003, p.22). Similarly, I examine whether TED speakers deploysimilar tactics to give science epistemic authority over other forms of belief. Counter-arguments cansimply present an alternative viewpoint, for example, in a talk about searching for aliens, a counter-argument may be that it is a waste of money. Examining the presence of counter-arguments in TED

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talks may give insights into the extent to which speakers adhere to their preferred theories, raisingquestions about the certainty and authority of the claims made.

Next, in chapter 3, I explore the use of personal narratives that TED speakers embed within their talksto connect with the audience on an emotional and interpersonal level. As noted earlier, Scotto diCarlo (2015a) found that Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk drew heavily on her personal story of how havinga stroke changed her life. I will build on this analysis, investigating how many of my sample talkscontain the speaker’s personal narratives, and how speakers utilise them.

Finally, in chapter 4, I examine the performative aspect of my sample talks; namely, how speakersresort to props and visualisations to aid the communication of their message. I propose that usingprops and visualisations give more concrete ground to claims made by speakers, which are oftenabstract insights. I investigate whether using props and visualisations results in any interestingconnotations about the topic at hand, and more broadly, TED as a organisation.

2.EXPLORING THE HYBRID GENRE OF TEDGENRE SHIFT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Similar to Cloître and Shinn’s (1985) claim that all texts lie on an expository continuumranging from completely specialised texts at one end and entirely popularised ones at theother, Hilgartner (1990) proposes a similar schema of a spectrum of text types. He suggeststhat genres range in a spectrum of ‘upstream’ texts, which are targeted at specialist scientificaudiences, and ‘downstream’ texts that are aimed at non-technical audiences (see figure 1)(Hilgartner, 1990; Mellor, 2003).

Figure 1 Spectrum of upstream and downstream texts. Taken from Hilgartner (1990). Fahnestock (1993) found the genre shift from the original portrayal of a scientist’s work topopularisation occurs due to a change in statement types that occur when texts are aimed at lessspecialised audiences. This, therefore, results in findings being portrayed as more certain inpopularised texts than in scientific papers (Fahnestock, 1993). Furthermore, Hyland (1998)analysed 26 research articles from cell and molecular biology journals, altogether consisting ofapproximately 75,000 words, and found hedging to represent more than one word in every 50.Moreover, Hyland (2005) examined 56 academic papers, and found marketing and philosophy tohave far more hedges than physics and engineering, with biology holding the middle ground.

I will now attempt to unveil the extent of hedging and counter-arguments present in the 25 mostviewed science-related TED talks, exploring the arsenal that these videos use to give scienceauthority, and consequently determine how far along this spectrum of popularisation these talksexist.HEDGING

Only three out of the 25 talks included fully hedged statements. One of the most explicit examples ispsychologist Martin Seligman’s statement in his talk about positive psychology, “But watch out here.This is merely correlational data, not causal” (Seligman, 2004, 08:05). Seligman (2004, 07:39) was, of

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course, referring to a trend of happy people being “extremely social”. The quote renders the theorybeing presented as provisional since it highlights that although the two factors may correlate, theremay not be a causal connection between them. It is, however, made apparent that Seligman andother positive psychologists have a hunch that the there may be a causal link between the two factors,otherwise it would not be worth mentioning them. Such a statement would probably never make it intoa popularised news article. Seligman’s statement is, however, only one out of a few statements in which speakers indicatedlimitations in their own work. Another was by the cancer researcher William Li (2010, 10:22) who saidin his talk about antiangiogenic therapy that the experiments only had “modest” improvements forsome cancers and tumour types. This statement ensures the therapy does not seem hyped orsensationalised, and portrays a more realistic view on its efficacy (Li, 2010). In another talk, teenagerJack Andraka (2013, 07:54), who discovered a detector for pancreatic cancer, said: “it was shortlyafterwards that I discovered my once brilliant procedure had something like a million holes in it.” Thismore accurately represents the scientific method as incremental advancements rather than a series ofeureka moments. Andraka (2013) does, however, add that he filled in these holes in the subsequentmonths.

Hedging was also used in a couple of talks to accurately to justify the status given to theories. Forexample, physicist Brain Greene (2005, 0:59) said in his talk about string theory, “Although we don'tyet know whether it's right or wrong”. This reduces the audience’s expectations of narrative closure,and hints that there is more likely to be cliff- hanger sort of ending instead — do extra dimensionsexist or not? We don’t know yet.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ talk on “militant atheism” also contained a hedge, where hereferred to 42 studies since 1927 that showed that one’s intelligence correlated inversely with religiousbelief (Dawkins, 2002). But, Dawkins (2002, 16:27) added: “I haven't seen the original 42 studies, andI can't comment on that meta-analysis.” This hedge becomes even more evident in Dawkins’ talk sincethe rest of it is settled in ‘preaching’ militant atheism and disparaging religion (Dawkins, 2002).

Other types of hedges that were more common in my sample are what Horn (2001) calls single-wordhedges. I will refer to these as “mini-hedges”, since not all my examples are only one word. Oneexample of a mini-hedge is from a talk by neurologist VS Ramachandran (2007, 17:22) aboutlearned paralysis: “But, it turns out some component of stroke paralysis is also learned paralysis, andmaybe that component can be overcome using mirrors.” The “maybe” comes after a detailedexplanation of how Ramachandran (2007) has successfully used this as a treatment for his ownpatients. Career analyst Dan Pink (2009) uses a similar hedge at the end of his talk: “maybe, maybe— we can change

the world.” Both of these mini-hedges assert that there might be a positive effect. There is, however,a difference between hedging a claim about the efficacy of a particular technique, and hedging astatement about the wider implications of a development such as changing the world(Ramachandran, 2007; Pink, 2009).

Physicist Stephen Hawking (2008, 09:17) also uses a mini-hedge when asked a question in his talk: “Ithink it [is] quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years.” Similarly,game designer Jane McGonigal (2012) created a game that helps boost resilience in people, so they“lead a life truer to their dreams”. She noted that if you play the game, it is “more than likely [that] youwill not have any of those top five regrets” that people have on their deathbeds according to scientificliterature (McGonigal, 2012).

I did not spot any further examples of hedges in my sample talks. My sample talks therefore contain

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fewer hedges than academic papers, which are “extensively hedged” (Hyland, 2005, p.103). Mostof the hedges presented in academic papers are important placeholders of caution to ensureaccurate communication of research without the presence of hyperbole.

COUNTER-ARGUMENTS

Fahnestock (1993) points out that one feature of science popularisations is that they often omitcontradictory information. Cope et al (2013) say, “effective scientific arguments acknowledge counter-claims from alternate or opposing positions,” which distinguishes them from points made in the currentargument, and addresses those that are deemed questionable. Furthermore, Cope et al (2013, p.436)describe argumentation as a “disciplinary foundation of science”. Mellor (2003) also notes that onetactic used by popularised texts to assert authority on science is to downplay other forms of belief.

Five TED talks out of my sample most evidently contained counter-arguments. Some of these referrespectfully to alternative viewpoints. In VS Ramachandran’s talk, for example, he mentions theFreudian view for a rare syndrome (Ramachandran, 2007). Ramachandran (2007, 03:40) initiallydistances himself from the theory by saying, “I’m not saying I believe this, but this is the standardFreudian view.” He, however, credits the alternative viewpoint by adding, “it’s very ingenious, as allFreudian arguments are” (Ramachandran, 2007, 04:22). Another example of a respectful mention ofan alternative viewpoint is from psychologist Dan Gilbert (2004, 18:53) in his talk about the scienceof happiness: “The Bard said everything best, of course, and he's making my point here but he'smaking it hyperbolically.” He went further to add, “It's nice poetry, but that can't exactly be right”before building his case (Gilbert, 2004, 19:04).

Furthermore, circadian neuroscientist Russell Foster (2013) presents the three biggest ideas in hisfield about why humans sleep in his talk. Foster (2013) refers to the ideas of restoration, energyconservation and brain processing and memory consolidation. He dedicates roughly equal amounts oftime to each theory, but makes it clear that he is keener on the latter idea, less convinced by thesecond, and says that there is also “good evidence” for the first hypothesis (Foster, 2013, 06:11). Priorto this, however, Foster (2013) mentions that there are dozens of ideas about why we sleep, but hewas only going to outline three. But not all talks give counter-arguments that much respect; some just mention a alternative viewbriefly, perhaps because it is a commonly held belief, and so they can refute it, often with a surprisingtwist. Behavioural psychologist Dan Ariely (2008, 08:40), for example, refers to the “standardeconomist” view on why people don’t opt in to donating their organs. Despite describing the standardeconomist argument to be of “rationality”, Ariely (2008, 08:40) makes their argument sound amusing:“The cost of lifting the pencil and marking a ‘V’ is higher than the possible benefit of the decision, sothat's why we get this effect.” In this way, Ariely (2008) renders the counter-argument humorous, andsets a platform for its refutation.

On the other hand, Dawkins’ “militant atheism” talk was entirely devoted to denigrating creationismand intelligent design so much that he doesn’t actually explain any of these beliefs in any depth(Dawkins, 2002). He mentions that intelligent design is allegedly a newer version of creationism, butrefutes that by claiming it is just creationism under a new name (Dawkins, 2002). Dawkins (2002)does not think these ideas are worth explaining; he says his mission is to preach militant atheism,and that he despises religion.

Mapping out the theories in different fields can be a tricky task. The dilemma, therefore, is whichtheories are worth mentioning and why? For example, Foster (2013) says that there are a dozentheories that attempt to explain why we sleep. How, then, did Foster (2013) decide which three topresent before us? Was it the three most dominant or the three he believed there to be most evidence

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for? Or did he choose the three that he personally thought were most likely to be true? The answermay never be known, but the fact is that beliefs often have inherent personal values attached to them,which may or may not accurately represent the views of others in the field.

DEBUNKING ‘MYTHS’

Whether all counter-arguments are worth including is another matter. The opposing stance formany problems is not a scientific theory but another form of belief such as magic orpseudoscience, which, many would argue don’t deserve a mention. As Mellor (2003) notes,demystifying existing myths renders science as authoritative over other beliefs, and many talks inmy sample deploy this strategy to give scientific claims authority over others. This also raises theoverall credibility of the talk in audiences’ minds.

Two TED talks in my sample were entirely based around debunking myths. One was by MichaelShermer (2006), the founder of the Skeptic society, who outlines the remit of the society’s magazine,Skeptic. “Some people call us debunkers, which is kind of a negative term. But let's face it, there's alot of bunk,” Shermer (2006, 00:32) says. Shermer (2006, 00:49) then gives an example of the“Quadro 2000 Dowser Rod”, which is a piece of plastic with a radio shack antenna attached to it. Thiswas being sold to school administrators for $900 each, and its purpose was to detect marijuana instudents’ lockers (Shermer, 2006). But, Shermer (2006) points out that the rod only works if enough ofthe lockers are opened, which somewhat defeats its purpose.

On the contrary, I would argue that Richard Dawkins’ talk takes debunking to whole new level, which Iwill ironically refer to as “preaching”, since, as he mentions, you cannot disprove a negative (Dawkins,2002). He says that Charles Darwin preferred to refer to himself as an “agnostic”, and said he wouldnot refer to himself as an atheist, since he could not disprove the existence of a God (Dawkins, 2002,20:28). But, Dawkins (2002, 22:26) clarifies his own stance by adding, “you'd think we might havegrown up since then”, since Darwin lived more than 100 years ago. He compares belief in God withacceptance of unicorns and tooth fairies, and goes further to say: “the onus is on you to say why. Theonus is not on the rest of us to say why not” (Dawkins, 2002, 22:37). The remaining TED talks in my sample use debunking myths as a literary device to reiterate andgive authority to the scientific stance on the issue. As Russell Foster (2013, 20:47) says, “And thisisn't some sort of crystal-waving nonsense. This is a pragmatic response to good health”. Becausesleep is a subject that many overlook, Foster (2013) attempts to draw attention to its importanceusing scientific evidence.

Jane McGonigal (2012) uses a slightly different approach in her talk about her game that boostsresilience; she asserts the validity of her statements by backing them up constantly with scientificclaims instead of debunking counter-claims. McGonigal (2012) mentions that her work is in line with“validated” insights from scientific literature 12 times throughout her talk. At one point, she says: “weknow from more than 1,000 peer- reviewed scientific studies that you can add 10 years of life byboosting your four types of resilience” (McGonigal, 2012, 17:25). Similarly, when referring to a claimthat creative people are 8 times more likely to get synaesthesia because they’re “crazy”, VSRamachandran (2007, 18:55) says: “Now, that's not really a scientific theory, so we can forget aboutit.” Although it is humorous, the statement has the same effect as the aforementioned examples.Finally, career analyst Dan Pink (2009, 05:16) asserts in his talk that science knows what is best andshould be used as a basis on which society’s decisions should be made: “There is a mismatchbetween what science knows and what business does.” He repeats this statement 3 times in his talk,and ends with reiterating that this mismatch needs to be repaired (Pink, 2009).

Not all talks portray science as authoritative only when compared to pseudoscience; some alsocompare it to other disciplines. VS Ramachandran (2007, 23:10), for instance, gives science authority

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over philosophy right at the end of his talk by saying: “All of these questions that philosophers havebeen studying for millennia, we scientists can begin to explore by doing brain imaging, and bystudying patients and asking the right questions.”

LOCATING TED ON THE SPECTRUM OF POPULARISATION

12 out of my 25 sample talks contained a science-as-authoritative discourse, either by attempting todebunk other beliefs or by using the ‘it all boils down to science’ sort of rhetoric. This enables thespeakers to assert the validity of the claims made. Bratton (2013) suggests that TED talks go “beyondpopularisation”, but I would argue, at least for the talks that contain evidentiary hedging or counter-arguments, that these lie somewhere on this spectrum of popularisation. As hedging and counter-arguments are common features of specialist texts, I am inclined to suggest that these talks are closertowards the end that is targeted at specialist audiences, or more upstream, than some other types ofpopularisations (see figure 1) (Hyland, 2005; Hilgartner, 1990). These TED talks are, however,undoubtedly further along this spectrum towards the end of popularisation, or more downstream, thanspecialist texts such as research papers (Hilgartner, 1990). It is important to assert, however, thateach talk will have its own unique position along this spectrum, which depends on the extent offeatures it contains from each type of genre.

Researcher Giuseppina Scotto di Carlo (2015c) told me in an interview that she also found little use ofcounter-arguments in the corpus of talks she has analysed, but she argued that not mentioningcounter-arguments is only a problem if we consider TED in a “canonical scientific context”. “But”,Scotto di Carlo (2015c) adds, “We are talking about a different genre, which is not classifiable — anddoes not want to be classified — as a standard scientific conference context”. She goes on to say:“Using other experts’ opinions makes the speakers’ position seem more credible, and statistics makean argument seem more conclusive and valid.” Additionally, science journalist Frank Swain (2015)added in an interview:

I don't think TED speakers should be forced to mention counter arguments. They are notpresenting scientific papers for publication. Of course they should be truthful about thelimitations of their ideas, but the bombastic nature of the show probably discourages being toohonest. The onus is on TED to ensure the people they give a platform to are honest in theirdealings with the public.

When hedging and counter-arguments are present in these talks, they are useful tools to map out theextent of popularisation. These are especially effective in assessing Bratton’s (2013) claim about TEDtalks being “beyond popularisation”. They are, however, not as fruitful for the talks that do not containthem. For those talks, I propose that future research should concentrate on identifying the presence orabsence of other textual features of different text types in order to determine their degree ofpopularisation along this spectrum.

3. PERSONAL NARRATIVES

NARRATIVES IN SCIENCE COMMUNICATION

The four main types of texts that are used to communicate science are expository texts,argumentative texts, narratives and a combination of expository and narrative texts (Avraamidou andOsborne, 2009). Expository texts are mostly found in textbooks, and are univocal and non-dialectic,whereas argumentative texts are dialectic and rarely found in textbooks (Avraamidou and Osborne,2009). According to Avraamidou and Osborne (2009), argumentative texts build on a claimthroughout, but its conclusions are often hedged.

Narrative texts are, however, split into ‘narratives of science’ and ‘narratives of nature’ (Avraamidouand Osborne, 2009). In narratives of science, scientists find a claim that is supported by data, butscience popularisations often have a narrative of nature, in which the activity of organisms is often

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anthropomorphised, and presented in a story format (Avraamidou and Osborne, 2009). The finalformat embeds narrative within expository texts, which is used by popularisers to draw and hold theaudiences’ attention (Avraamidou and Osborne, 2009).

Storytelling, however, often has “negative connotations” within the scientific community, as it issometimes viewed as “baseless” or “manipulative” (Dahlstrom, 2014, p.13614).But narratives remain important literary devices that can simplify the communication of science with“otherwise resistant” audiences (Dahlstrom, 2014, p.13617). There is also evidence that suggeststhat human brains become more active when we tell or are told stories (Wildrich, 2012).

The advertising industry relies on first-person stories and insights from psychology, and some believethat science needs to cash in to using academics’ personal narratives about their research foreffective communication (SpotOn, 2013). Science journalist Maryn McKenna, for instance, foundherself to be one of the victims of a food outbreak story, which “moved the idea of writing it in first-person from self-indulgent memoir to more of a useful cautionary tale” (SpotOn, 2013; McKenna,2012). Moreover, some scientists think climate researchers can explain why they are worried aboutthe climate more effectively if they embed their personal stories into their work (Abraham and Dessler,2013).

In this chapter, I will explore the personal narratives embedded in my sample of the 25 most viewedscience-related TED talks. I am going to split up the personal narratives into “progressive” personalnarratives that advance as the talk goes on from what I will call “snippet” personal narratives that areshort mentions, of no longer than a 2-3 sentences, of how the work is relevant in the researchers’lives.

PROGRESSIVE PERSONAL NARRATIVES

The most evident example of a progressive personal narrative in my sample is Jill Bolte Taylor’s “mystroke of insight” talk, which is the most viewed science TED talk with more than 17 million views(Taylor, 2008). Taylor’s (2008, 15:02) talk is about her experience of a stroke, which she describesas “nirvana” and “euphoria”; it is this surprise factor that makes her talk interesting. Her talk starts offwith her talking generally about her job and life, and then about how the stroke affected her life, andfinally, at the end, about how she was diagnosed (Taylor, 2008). It follows poet Philip Larkin’sformula of a narrative by containing a beginning, muddle and an end (Lundin, 2012). Taylor’s talkzooms in into the muddle, which in her case, is her experience of a stroke, where she keeps zoningin and out of a place she calls “la la land”, as the left side of here brain hemisphere turns off, and shedrifts into the right (Taylor, 2008, 09:29). What makes this talk intriguing is that it goes beyond thedata and the realms of traditional science, especially when Taylor (2008, 13:41) refers to her “spirit”;for example, she says, “I just felt my energy lift and just I felt my spirit surrender”. Moreover, Taylor’s(2008) talk signifies the human ability is powerful, but nevertheless, humans are ignorant when itcomes to utilising this ‘peaceful’ area of the brain.

“Appeals to pathos in TED talks create a connection with their audiences,” Scotto di Carlo (2015c)told me. This is because this builds a bridge of similarity between the speaker and the audience(Scotto di Carlo, 2015a). In Taylor’s case, this is by the fact that she is a profound brain scientist, yetshe is just as vulnerable to a stroke as anyone else. “Through TED, experts might contribute to the‘humanisation’ of knowledge, establishing an interpersonal proximity with the audience,” Scotto diCarlo (2015a, p.33) says. Surprisingly, four other talks from my sample contained progressivepersonal narratives too. The humans-as-vulnerable discourse was also present in Jane McGonigal’stalk about a game that could give you an extra 10 years of life and Jack Andraka’s talk about apossible test for pancreatic cancer (McGonigal, 2012; Andraka, 2013). In the former, the speakersuffered a concussion, and in the latter, the speaker’s family friend died of pancreatic cancer; bothtalks are thus humanised by the speakers’ susceptibility to their situations (McGonigal, 2012;

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Andraka, 2013). In both of these talks, however, the speaker is portrayed with a fighting spirit. Taylor (2008) wantedto share her feelings of nirvana and peace with the world, which motivated her to get better.McGonigal (2012) went through post-traumatic growth and devoured the scientific literature tounderstand what was going on, and Andraka wanted answers to his questions, so one day we canall have that “one more family member to love” (McGonigal, 2012; Andraka, 2013, 09:15). Theemotional appeal sits alongside the humans-as-vulnerable discourse in these talks, as the viewercan relate with the speaker due to their similarity.

Psychologist Shawn Achor’s talk, “the happy secret to better work”, takes a slightly different route.Instead of using the emotional appeal, his talk goes down the comical route (Achor, 2011).Essentially, Achor’s talk does still contain the vulnerability discourse, as he talks about breaking hissister’s arm a week before pushing her off the bed to land on her knees and arms. But, his talk alsosignifies innocence and naivety, since his story refers to his sister, “Amy the unicorn” and him playingat the “tender ages of just 5 and 7” (Achor, 2011, 05:49, 02:43). Similarly, VS Ramachandran’s talkalso signifies naivety and innocence when his patient calls him to tell him that the phantom arm, whichhe had for 10 years, has suddenly disappeared due to a mirror box that Ramachandran had given tohim for experimental self-treatment. “He thought I was some kind of magician,” says Ramachandran(2007, 16:34). This vulnerability in this talk is highlighted through the fact that humans can reach sucha stage, of having a phantom arm, in the first place.

Journalist Joshua Foer’s talk about memory also draws the ideas of vulnerability, but does so in amore subtle fashion (Foer, 2012). Namely, the vulnerability element of Foer’s (2012) talk is that newtechnologies enable humans to externalise their memories more easily, which, he argues, haschanged humans culturally, and even cognitively. He, being a vulnerable human being himself,entered the memory contest after training himself accordingly, and ended up winning the memorycontest, which he says “really wasn’t supposed to happen” (Foer, 2012, 15:28).

SNIPPET PERSONAL NARRATIVES

Some talks, however, only contain short stories of a few sentences that re-contextualise the talk in thespeakers’ own personal experience. Richard Dawkins’ talk, for example, raises the questionthroughout the talk in the viewers’ minds about why Dawkins (2002) despises religion so much. Heexplains why that is the case right at the end of his talk saying, “how did September 11th change you?Well here’s how it changed me” (Dawkins, 2002, 28:42). This anchors the talk into context of hispersonal life. It is also worth noting that Dawkins’ talk was in America in 2002, after the September11th 2001 attacks.

I found four other instances of snippet personal narratives in my sample talks. In contrast to Dawkins’talk, three of these were began at the start of the talk to provide the background context and set thescene for what is to come. In psychologist Martin Seligman’s talk, he mentions that CNN asked him tocomment on the state of psychology in one word, and he says “good”. When given two words, hesays “not good”, and when he was finally given three, he says, “not good enough” (Seligman, 2004,00:35). This sets out the scene for him to build on why the state of psychology today was not goodenough. Moreover, behavioural economist Dan Ariely says at the start of his talk that writing academic papersis not very exciting. He, therefore, decided to write a cookbook called, “Dining without crumbs: the artof eating over the sink” (Ariely, 2008, 00:40). But, he was turned away from MIT Press and numerousothers, and was requested to write about his research instead. However, Dan Pink’s talk aboutmotivation takes a slightly different approach. Pink begins his talk mentioning how he made a mistakeof going to law school and hated it, and in this talk he plans to utilise some of the skills he gained,

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despite admitting that he didn’t gain very many skills (Pink, 2009). He then encapsulates hismessages throughout the talk, and finishes right at the end with “I rest my case” (Pink, 2009, 18:24).Although, I would argue that Pink’s snippet personal narrative is present at the beginning of the talk,he also draws the viewer back into line of that narrative by finishing with that well-known judicialrhetoric after going off on a tangent throughout his talk (Pink, 2009). This also constructs the narrativeof his talk as more of a loop structure.

Temple Grandin’s talk on autism also has snippets of her personal experience, which anchor theclaims she makes about autistic people, but these are scattered throughout her talk rather than beingburied specifically at the beginning or at the end (Grandin, 2010). For example, about a minute intoher talk, Grandin (2010, 01:10) says, “I think in pictures, I don't think in language.” At a different point,she says, “my mind works like Google for images” (Grandin, 2010, 02:43). As a result of humanisingthe intellectual experience, embedding personal narratives into TED talks allows audiences toconnect with speakers at an interpersonal level (Scotto di Carlo, 2015a). The talks in my sampledeploy personal narratives as an arsenal to make them more relatable to audiences, as the speaker isa human being just like them. The talks with the progressive personal narratives seem to draw on thehumans-as-vulnerable discourse, and also build on rhetoric that connotes ignorance, naivety andeven innocence in some cases, on the part of the speaker themselves.

4. PERFORMATIVE FACTORSIMPORTANCE OF VISUAL AIDS

TED’s instructions for speakers say that “substance matters more than performance”, according toTED’s curator Chris Anderson (2014). “Personal connection may be good, emotional manipulation isnot,” it goes on to add (Anderson, 2014). But the performative aspect of a TED talk neverthelessremains an important factor in determining how engaging a talk is. Bill Gates (2009), for instance, uses a memorable prop about 5 minutes through his TED talk titled,“Mosquitos, malaria and education”, which is not part of my sample. He releases live mosquitoes inthe auditorium, and says: “We'll let those roam around the auditorium a little bit. There's no reasononly poor people should have the experience” (Gates, 2009, 05:10). Gates (2009), however, clarifiesthat these mosquitoes were not infected with the malaria parasite. According to Dlugan (2013),popular opinion has pegged Gates to be a “mediocre presenter” for decades, so his talk “benefitedgreatly” from unique and thoughtful prop. Dlugan (2013) goes further to say that props are usefulwhen accompanying speeches because they are “concrete” as you can hold and feel them, whilst thespeech by its nature is “abstract” — a process, belief or an idea. Adding props, says Dlugan (2013),“adds significant realism” to presentations. Furthermore, props are unexpected, facilitate emotion anddrama, and add a memorable aspect to the talk (Dlugan 2013). Estrada and Davis (2014) argue that visual communication is becoming a prominent part of ourcultural identity. They go on to argue that one of the hurdles for visual communication of science,however, is that “visual material is treated as optional add-on ingredient instead of being anintegrated part of the whole” (Estrada and Davis 2014, p.7). The second drawback, they say, is thelack of identification of audiences, and therefore the difficulty in tailoring these visual elementstowards these audiences (Estrada and Davis, 2014). Estrada and Davis (2014, p.8), therefore, call forscience communicators to become “visually literate”, and learn design theory to aid visualcommunication of science.

I will now go on to explore the use of props and visualisations in the 25 most viewed science-related TED talks.

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PROPS

“When wielded with finesse, a prop can make a good talk that much more captivating,” says JessicaGross (2013) on TED’s blog. According to Gross (2013), one of the best ever props ever presented atTED is a human brain with a spinal cord attached that Jill Bolte Taylor (2008) brought onto stage. Thebrain was a surprise because a cloth covered it, but it also serves to give a more concrete dimensionto Taylor’s talk, which, as I mentioned in chapter 3, goes beyond merely mentioning data trends usingscientific methods to describing what traditional science would consider flaky or abstract insights(Dlugan, 2013; Taylor, 2008). Taylor’s speech is effective because it is her personal experience; Idon’t think her approach would work as well if she were describing someone else’s stroke (Taylor,2008). The brain also has larger connotations of knowledge, and zoom-in shots of the brain show the gapbetween the left and right hemispheres, signifying the knowledge gaps of humans about differentconcepts and ideas (Taylor, 2008). Similarly, Russell Foster (2013) also uses a brain replica in histalk. Foster’s talk is about the importance of sleep, which he says, many people underestimate; usinga brain model, he describes the brain areas that remain active when we sleep (Foster, 2013). In thisway, by reflecting on its ramifications on a brain model, Foster (2013) renders the underrated entity ofsleep as important.

As mentioned in chapter 2, Michael Shermer (2006) brought what allegedly is a marijuana detectorfor students’ lockers. This prop helps to assert Shermer’s debunking of the equipment by showing theaudience that it’s not worth its price of $900 each (Shermer, 2006). Neuroscientist and artist BeauLotto (2009) uses various props throughout his talk to demonstrate optical illusions that our brainconstantly gets puzzled by. Interestingly, Lotto (2009) also uses sound to full effect, presenting musicthat has been mixed with colour for visually impaired children. No other visual or audio props wereused in the rest of my sample talks. According to Gross (2013), TED hopes to see more props attheir future events.

VISUALISATIONS AND COMMON DISCOURSES

But a few talks did use other forms of visual aid that enhanced the speakers’ performance in a similarway to props. David Gallo’s talk about creatures from under the sea and Alexander Tsiaras’ talk aboutthe human birth cycle particularly makes use of beautiful images gathered as part of their research(Gallo, 2007; Tsiaras, 2010). I would argue that these images could be considered as props, whichbring concreteness into the process od communication. In contrast to Estrada and Davis’ point aboutvisual material being treated as an add-on ingredient instead of a self-contained component, however,I would argue that the visual factors of these two talks are the pillars on which the talks stand (Estradaand Davis, 2014; Gallo, 2007; Tsiaras, 2010). Furthermore, these two talks contain discourses ofnature being portrayed as beautiful and perfect (Gallo, 2007; Tsiaras, 2010).

But the nature-as-perfect discourse is only present in a few talks because it undermines the science-as-authoritative standpoint that, as I mentioned in chapter 2, so many of these talks religiously adhereto. Although, I don’t think that these two discourses are entirely contradictory of each other, sincetechnically nature can be portrayed as perfect and science can also be portrayed as authoritative inthe same talk. But this requires science to be the study of nature without any meddling, which weknow is usually not the case with scientific processes. So if science often requires meddling, it doesnot necessarily fit with the discourse of nature being perfect, as a perfect entity demands appreciationand acceptance in its form without any interference.

Furthermore, the nature-as-beautiful/perfect discourse does not necessarily rely on humans beingignorant; for example, we understand for the most part how an embryo develops in the womb, yet weare able to appreciate the visual images of a developing embryo presented to us in Tsiaras’ (2010)

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talk. But not understanding a phenomenon completely does enable us to be more imaginative, andappreciate that some things are just to be respected, as they are beyond human understanding. Forexample, Brian Greene’s talk gets the audience to appreciate string theory, and its predictedoutcomes by saying: “Different particles are responsible for all the richness around us” (Greene,2005, 11:08). The nature-as-beautiful/perfect discourse does, however, fit well with the humans-as- ignorantdiscourse, especially if the talk is on a controversial topic, where there are many different viewpointspresent. When talking about current perceptions of sleep, Russell Foster (2013, 02:37) says humanshave used Thomas Edison’s light bulb to “invade the night and we occupied the dark, and in theprocess of this occupation, we've treated sleep as an illness”. Foster (2013) therefore renders sleepas the natural and perfect phenomenon, which humans are meddling with by staying awake, and notgetting enough sleep. Because nature is perfect and humans are ignorant for not seeing it that way,Beau Lotto (2009, 14:10) says in his talk about optical illusions, “no one is an outside observer ofnature”.

Although the performance of a TED talk remains an important factor in determining how engaging itis, the use of props and other visual aids seems to be relatively low, at least in the corpus of talks thatI analysed. It turns out that speakers of science-related TED talks are yet to utilise these tools ofvisual communication to full effect. When visually appealing images are used, they often conveynature as perfect or beautiful, which undermines science’s epistemic authority over nature. Drawingon the discourse of science-as-authoritative is, however, important for TED talks in the sciencecategory, as speakers use the authority of science to assert the legitimacy of their talk content.

4. CONCLUSIONSThis study suggests that TED talks that contain hedges or counter-arguments, which are commonfeatures of scientific research papers, do not go “beyond popularisation”, as Bratton (2013) claims.Rather, these videos lie within the spectrum of popularisation, leaning more towards the end wherethe hypothetical entirely popularised texts would be than the end where technical scientific papers arelocated. For talks that do not contain these placeholders of caution, it is not clear from this analysishow far along this spectrum of popularisation they exist. More work investigating the presence orabsence of other commonly found features in popularised texts and scientific research papers mayassist in determining their position along this spectrum. Each talk has its own unique position on thiscontinuum, depending on its context in its field, which may make future efforts of demarcating anddetermining exact positions of these talks a rather laborious, and perhaps fruitless, task.Nevertheless, using commonly found features of different types of texts as pointers may serve well tolocate rough relevant regions along this spectrum. One may also find such techniques useful inelucidating the norms of popularisation of TED talks between different fields; this will especially beinteresting because Hyland (2005) has found academic articles in the fields of marketing andphilosophy to be more hedged than papers from the sciences. Scotto di Carlo (2015a) says that talks that contain personal narratives engage audience at aninterpersonal level. This study seems to agree with this claim, showing that many of my most viewedscience-related talks contain speakers’ personal narratives. These either progress throughout thetalk, or are present as snippets — from a few words to a few sentences — at the beginning, end orscattered throughout the speech. Personal narratives anchor the content of the talk and re-contextualise it in the speakers’, and ultimately, the audiences’ lives. TED may also be anappropriate medium for scientists to say why their research matters, and how it affects their livespersonally, if that is what engages viewers best. As SpotOn (2013) suggests, science needs to makeroom for the “I”. I will go further to say that science needs to make room for the “I” to explain why.

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Not all communication devices seem to be operating in my sample talks, however. Ironically, I foundmost of my sample talks to be quite visually dull considering that TED is a visual medium. Academics,it turns out, are not the most creative of people when it comes to making their work visually appealing.The few props that are present in my sample talks including a real brain and spine, a brain replica anda radio shack marijuana detector contain larger connotations of ‘knowledge’ and ‘innovation’ that TEDproudly adheres itself to. As for attractive visualisations, only a couple of my sample talks use them,perhaps because TED’s speakers’ instructions say that substance matters more than performance(Anderson, 2014). Apart from the aesthetic appeal of making science-related TED talks more visuallyintriguing, I argue that props and visualisations function to offer concreteness to topics that can bequite abstract. I agree with Estrada and Davis (2015) that science communicators need to becomemore visually literate, and treat visual material as a necessity for their audience rather than add-onflavouring. Moreover, I do also concur with Estrada and Davis (2015) that science communicationcould benefit from incorporating theory and practice from the field of design to exploit a largerrepertoire of applicable visual tools. These insights may be useful to TED as an organisation to ask themselves critical questions abouttheir content such as: do our talks contain a balanced and accurate portrayal of a field or do theyrecycle speculative value judgements and views that are limited to a minority of advocates in thefield? These observations also offer inroads to further exploring science popularisations and TEDtalks in general. One may, for example, look to explore whether the hybrid genre of TED is applicablein other mediums or whether the degree of popularisation has any effect on audience engagement.

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