Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
23rd EURAM Conference, Dublin, İrlanda, 14 - 16 Haziran 2023, ss.1-30
Social problems such as human rights violations, poverty, and environmental destruction that
social entrepreneurs aim to tackle and humor might be thought of as concepts that are not expected
to come together. However, studies demonstrate the capacity of humor to induce change in
attitudes. Many examples from different fields illustrate the importance of humor in the fight
against injustice and efforts to bring about social change. The purpose of this study is to investigate
the use of humor by social entrepreneurs. Specifically, we focused on how social entrepreneurs
use humor in their TED talks to engage and inspire their audiences. First, a sample of 102 TED
talks was identified; 35 videos did not incorporate humor in their content, while 67 did include
humor. Then, the content analysis of 30 randomly selected TED talks that contained humor was
analyzed to understand how humor was used in the presentations. Our findings showed that social
entrepreneurs frequently employed self-disparaging humor and used funny visuals in their talks.
The analysis revealed that the humor used by social entrepreneurs had four main targets: the social
entrepreneur themselves, the underlying cause of the social issue, the process of finding a solution,
and the consequences of proposed solutions. We suggest that humor can be a helpful tool for social
entrepreneurs to connect with and persuade their audiences. Therefore, using humor in public
speaking might be considered a means of achieving social impact.