Center for Studies in Oral Tradition: Basque Oral Poetry Championship
Imagine selling 13,025 tickets for oral poetry. Imagine further an entire 6-7 hours of live performances broadcast on regional television as they happen, with excerpts, summaries, and expert commentary on national television. Imagine a one-day event – the final act in a multi-stage, four-year, Olympian drama of qualification and elimination – galvanizing ethnic, national identity to a degree unparalleled virtually anywhere in the world. Imagine the confluence of all of these phenomena and you have the Bertsolari Txapelketa, the national championship of bertsolaritza, the improvised contest poetry from Basque oral tradition, which took place in Barakaldo, Spain, on December 18, 2005.

Over 13,000 people at a poetry contest! Could this ever happen here?
Does the brain assimilate oral teachings differently from data read or watched (movie or TV)?
Is there a quantifiable qualitative difference?
Is there a difference between listening on the radio and listening in person?
Well, I know there is, but has it been studied?
Should be easy enough to do: Pack x-amount of data into a ten minute talk. Have subjects hear the talk in person, others hear via headphones, others read and the last group watch it one TV….

I wonder whether there are any scientific studies on the subject?
Thanks Y.

From an email:

I do know that there is lots of communication study that has been done on how we gather information. Trial lawyers are told that 70 to 80 % of informaton communicated is non-verbal. So, plainly the questions you ask have answers.

I just have to keep digging.