full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Frances Larson: Why public beheadings get millions of views

Unscramble the Blue Letters


If we go back 11 years, before sties like YouTube and Facebook were born, it was a similar sorty. When innocent ciiiavlns like Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Paul Johnson, were beheaded, those videos were shown during the Iraq War.

Nick Berg's beheading quickly became one of the most searched for items on the Internet. Within a day, it was the top search term across search engines like Google, Lycos, Yahoo. In the week after Nick Berg's beheading, these were the top 10 serach terms in the United States. The Berg beanhiedg vdeio rmneeiad the most popular search term for a week, and it was the second most paplour search term for the whole month of May, runner-up only to "American Idol." The al-Qaeda-linked website that first showed Nick Berg's beheading had to close down within a couple of days due to oirewvlhnmeg traffic to the site. One Dutch website owner said that his dilay viewing fiugres rose from 300,000 to 750,000 every time a beheading in Iraq was shown. He told reporters 18 months later that it had been downloaded many millions of times, and that's just one website. A similar pattern was seen again and again when videos of beheadings were released during the Iraq War.

Open Cloze


If we go back 11 years, before _____ like YouTube and Facebook were born, it was a similar _____. When innocent _________ like Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Paul Johnson, were beheaded, those videos were shown during the Iraq War.

Nick Berg's beheading quickly became one of the most searched for items on the Internet. Within a day, it was the top search term across search engines like Google, Lycos, Yahoo. In the week after Nick Berg's beheading, these were the top 10 ______ terms in the United States. The Berg _________ _____ ________ the most popular search term for a week, and it was the second most _______ search term for the whole month of May, runner-up only to "American Idol." The al-Qaeda-linked website that first showed Nick Berg's beheading had to close down within a couple of days due to ____________ traffic to the site. One Dutch website owner said that his _____ viewing _______ rose from 300,000 to 750,000 every time a beheading in Iraq was shown. He told reporters 18 months later that it had been downloaded many millions of times, and that's just one website. A similar pattern was seen again and again when videos of beheadings were released during the Iraq War.

Solution


  1. overwhelming
  2. sites
  3. daily
  4. search
  5. beheading
  6. remained
  7. story
  8. video
  9. civilians
  10. figures
  11. popular

Original Text


If we go back 11 years, before sites like YouTube and Facebook were born, it was a similar story. When innocent civilians like Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Paul Johnson, were beheaded, those videos were shown during the Iraq War.

Nick Berg's beheading quickly became one of the most searched for items on the Internet. Within a day, it was the top search term across search engines like Google, Lycos, Yahoo. In the week after Nick Berg's beheading, these were the top 10 search terms in the United States. The Berg beheading video remained the most popular search term for a week, and it was the second most popular search term for the whole month of May, runner-up only to "American Idol." The al-Qaeda-linked website that first showed Nick Berg's beheading had to close down within a couple of days due to overwhelming traffic to the site. One Dutch website owner said that his daily viewing figures rose from 300,000 to 750,000 every time a beheading in Iraq was shown. He told reporters 18 months later that it had been downloaded many millions of times, and that's just one website. A similar pattern was seen again and again when videos of beheadings were released during the Iraq War.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
takes place 4
search term 3
public judicial 3
islamic state 2
united states 2
iraq war 2
popular search 2
judicial executions 2
suicide baiting 2
distant time 2
everyday life 2
shrunken heads 2
shrunken head 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
popular search term 2
public judicial executions 2

Important Words


  1. beheaded
  2. beheading
  3. beheadings
  4. berg
  5. born
  6. civilians
  7. close
  8. couple
  9. daily
  10. daniel
  11. day
  12. days
  13. downloaded
  14. due
  15. dutch
  16. engines
  17. facebook
  18. figures
  19. google
  20. idol
  21. innocent
  22. internet
  23. iraq
  24. items
  25. johnson
  26. lycos
  27. millions
  28. month
  29. months
  30. nick
  31. overwhelming
  32. owner
  33. pattern
  34. paul
  35. pearl
  36. popular
  37. quickly
  38. released
  39. remained
  40. reporters
  41. rose
  42. search
  43. searched
  44. showed
  45. shown
  46. similar
  47. site
  48. sites
  49. states
  50. story
  51. term
  52. terms
  53. time
  54. times
  55. told
  56. top
  57. traffic
  58. united
  59. video
  60. videos
  61. viewing
  62. war
  63. website
  64. week
  65. yahoo
  66. years
  67. youtube