Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

Publication Title

Journal of Social Media in Society

Volume

12

Issue

2

Pages

264-280

Abstract

The development of interactive social media platforms has expanded how disability is communicated or shared with the public. Despite the potential of social media to challenge and educate nondisabled people's understanding of disability, little empirical research has been conducted in this area. In this study, we analyzed comments from a YouTube video from a seminal TED Talk by the late Australian disability rights activist, educator, and comedian Stella Young. The video titled "I'm not your inspiration, thank you very much | Stella Young" had accumulated 1,374,878 views, 22,000 likes, and 975 interactions (comments and responses) at the time of the analysis. Our findings suggest that most individuals who left public comments on the video viewed it favorably. They identified as being connected to, in agreement with, or being (un)ironically inspired by Young's talk. However, approximately 14% explicitly disagreed with Young's ideas during her TED Talk, and 7% directly criticized her ideas or appearance. Comments like these reproduce and perpetuate the same types of oppression and marginalization that occur in society.

Rights

© 2023 The Authors

Journal has right of first publication, simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Original Publication Citation

Mamo, Y., & Haegele, J. (2023). "I'm not your inspiration, thank you very much": Social media users' engagement with Stella Young's TED Talk. Journal of Social Media in Society, 12(2), 264-280. https://www.thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article/view/1325

ORCID

0000-0001-5171-5186 (Mamo), 0000-0002-8580-4782 (Haegele)

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