While exploring the TED Talks website this afternoon I came across a short, fun talk given by Alisa Miller. In her talk Alisa Miller shares information about the news that Americans see and how Americans see it. Miller also explains why some global stories don’t get the coverage that they should receive. During the talk Miller presents excellent visual representations of the type of news stories that are popular and where they are popular. The four minute talk is embedded below.

Reminder, if you need subtitles for this talk visit the TED website directly. On the TED website you can get subtitles and a transcript of this talk in eight languages.

Applications for Education
This TED Talk is short enough and effective enough to be an excellent starting place for a classroom discussion about what is news and what makes a story popular. If you work with ESL/EFL students it might be interesting to have those students exchange ideas about this topic with native English speakers.