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We partnered with United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the U.S., to answer a key question: how are young Latinx people encountering stories about immigration in U.S. media?  The research goal: help inform communication strategies for pro-immigration advocacy.

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Latinx Encounters with Immigration Stories in U.S. Media

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As part of a larger research project intended to build an audience-narrative architecture for developing content that can change the narrative on health equity, we built and tested hundreds of new storytelling approaches.

Health Equity Narratives: Strategy Validation

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We teamed up with Win/Black Pa’lante and A–B Partners to produce a report that deepens understanding of distinct audience segments for Black Americans, and how they might differ from other segments of the population, as well as surface insights that can sharpen the stories we are telling.

HarmonyLabs-ABPartners-Beyond-Demography-2206.pdf

Beyond Demography: Black Audiences Online

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Meme Factory seeks to compress the research skills of a polling and analytics firm and the creative acumen of an agency into a single lean team with a low-cost, repeatable process to produce high-engagement content that’s shareable, persuasive, and activating for specific, high-value audiences. 

Meme-Factory-Phase3-Results-Updated.pdf

Meme Factory

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Understanding people’s media habits gives us a deeper view into who they are, the values they hold, and how we might best engage them. Here, we set out to better understand Latinx Americans as media consumers in order to support outreach efforts and, ultimately, build civic participation. 


LatinxMedia_HarmonyLabs_EquisLabs_.pdf

What Media Matters for Latinx Americans?

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To help artists and advocates retell the story on nukes, this research identified persuadable audiences for denuclearization in the U.S. and created a set of audience-specific cultural briefs for a cohort of media makers.

NTI - Nukes Final Deck.pdf

Rewriting the Nuclear Story

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We worked with Fandom Forward (formerly The Harry Potter Alliance) to map aligned fandoms and identify possible fan activism opportunities. 


Finding the Fandoms

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Social media activity is often used as a proxy for engagement with live media content. We put this notion to the test using the premiere episode of the popular TV show The Walking Dead to design a study to track and compare, in real time, the neural response of individual viewers, using electroencephalogram (EEG), with aggregated Twitter activity. 

Zombies_Brains_Tweets_REPORT_FINAL.pdf

Zombies, Brains and Tweets

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In 2021, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation enlisted the support of Harmony Labs in building an audience-narrative architecture that could help RWJF and its partners develop content and storytelling strategies focused on improving healthcare and public health.

RWJF Deck-final-website.pdf

In Search of Healthy Narratives

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This new research expands upon work from the 2020 partnership between Harmony Labs and Equis Research to provide a view of Latinx engagement on YouTube. After analyzing over 250,000 days of consumption, what emerged were four distinct content ecosystems, each with very different engagement opportunities. 

HL_Equis_4YouTubeEcosystems_final.pdf

El Nuevo Noticiero 

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This research focuses on the current narratives of Artificial Intelligence in media as a baseline for artists in the Mozilla Foundation’s Creative Media Awards program creating media advocating for a healthier AI future. 

Mozilla-CMA-Research-Results-Final-07162020.pdf

A Healthy Narrative for Artificial Intelligence

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The fragmentation of media systems has left many wondering: how do people in the U.S. get information in what many perceive to be local media deserts? We explored civic information ecosystems online to answer this question and identify the “op-ed” of the 21st century. 


Civic-Info-Report-221012-PUBLIC (2).pdf

Beyond If You Write It, They Will Come

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We worked with Race Forward’s Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy to evaluate dozens of new media interventions to help inform a new storytelling strategy that might reach and resonate with unlikely audiences.


Harmony-Labs-Race-Forward-10012021.pdf

Art for Pro-Immigration Narratives

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When Inequality Media approached us to track and evaluate the social impact of their film, Inequality for All, they were on a mission to increase public understanding of income inequality. We designed and implemented a customized collection and analysis plan that looked at change over time across public opinion, social media, mainstream media and legislative proceedings. 

Inequality_For_All_REPORT_FINAL.pdf

Inequality for All

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The 2010 documentary Gasland appeared to have a significant effect on US mobilization against fracking. To test this notion, we collected data from online searches, social media, mainstream media, and local screening and mobilization events, developing a method that examined both conversation volume and content, using computational text analysis, such as topic modeling. 

NO_FRACKING_WAY_ASR.pdf

Gasland

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To what extent do neural responses to political media correlate with behavioral outcomes, like fundraising or voting? This was the question we sought to answer with a study of live coverage of the 2016 Democratic party primary debates, gathering data with electroencephalogram (EEG) and quick-response surveys and performing a moment-by-moment analysis of the debate footage, coding for production elements and debate content. 

Debate Brain

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First-of-its-kind research looking at the online narrative landscape that exists around guns and firearms in America—with the goal of uncovering Americans’ narratives around not just guns themselves, but also firearm injury and violence.


FINAL_harmony-brown-guns-612022.pdf

Guns: An All American Story

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New forms of media are emerging that offer previously passive viewers a more embodied, participatory experience. The question is: do these new forms actually result in increased empathetic response? We sought to answer this question using the immersive mixed media piece My Sky Is Falling, designing a study to include real-time data collection via wearable biosensors and quick-response surveys. 

A_New_Story_REPORT_FINAL.pdf

My Sky Is Falling

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In this project, we set out to map the narratives of climate skepticism, using Twitter and Reddit data, for filmmakers interested in using long-form narrative media to move beyond the political partisanship. 

Ariel_PRINT_171117_website.pdf

Project Ariel

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Step inside a “day in the media life” of our 4 values-distinct audiences. These are real-life media artifacts collected from 50,000+ people in the U.S. between January 2020 and May 2021. 

A Day In the Life: Poverty & Economic Narratives In the Feed

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VR Action Lab explored how virtual reality might activate young people as upstanders and address the precipitous drop in efficacy of middle school anti-bullying efforts, uniting award-winning media makers with young people, university researchers, experts, and middle-school practitioners across four states. 

HarmonyLabs_VRActionLab_DesignInVRToolkit_Nov2017.pdf

VR Action Lab: Video Trailer

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Mozilla’s advocacy team came to us with an online campaign to influence copyright reform in the EU. We audited their campaign strategy and organizational capacity and developed a custom analytic plan and impact evaluation of their campaign. 

Mozilla+Impact+Assessment+Highlights+170118.pdf

Change Copyright

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VR Action Lab explored how virtual reality might activate young people as upstanders and address the precipitous drop in efficacy of middle school anti-bullying efforts. It produced three VR experiences embedded in this pilot-tested six-lesson curriculum, along with other resources for VR media makers and mission-driven organizations.

HarmonyLabs_VRActionLab_Curriculum_Nov2017.pdf

VR Action Lab: Curriculum Guide

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The intersection of art, advocacy, and data science creates an opportunity for the work of social change to be both creative and informed by research. Over the last four years, we’ve been privileged to work alongside the Mozilla Foundation’s Creative Media Award program awardees in building projects that live within this intersectional space.

AI Advocacy, Impact Design, & Racial Justice

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This research focuses on the narratives of poverty and economic mobility in the U.S media. This work was the foundation for the Narrative Observatory prototype and was used by dozens of storytellers and advocates working to shift the cultural narratives that condition public understanding on poverty. 

Audience+Narratives_HarmonyLabs_Final.pdf

Audiences for Poverty Narratives in the U.S. Media

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VR Action Lab explored how virtual reality might activate young people as upstanders and address the precipitous drop in efficacy of middle school anti-bullying efforts. It produced three VR experiences embedded in a pilot-tested six-lesson curriculum, along with other resources, like this impact design toolkit for VR media makers and mission-driven organizations.

VR Action Lab: Impact Design Toolkit

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Caring Across Generations is working to create power around communities of care. To answer their questions about how to tell this story and where, they enlisted Harmony Labs to explore how audiences, defined by their core values, experience narratives about aging and eldercare in the media they consume.

HarmonyLabs_CAGNarrativeGround_210730.pdf

Care & Aging in Culture

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VR Action Lab explored how virtual reality might activate young people as upstanders and address the precipitous drop in efficacy of middle school anti-bullying efforts. It produced three VR experiences embedded in a pilot-tested six-lesson curriculum, along with other resources, like this issue briefing book for VR media makers and mission-driven organizations.

HarmonyLabs_VRActionLab_BriefingBook_Nov2017.pdf

VR Action Lab: Briefing Book

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Mapping the diverse storyscapes in media to inspire the creative development of new characters, worlds, and stories for game experiences that can resonate with users’ values.

A Home for Every Hero

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A culture-first approach for the next era of climate storytelling



How to Reach New Climate Audiences

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After analyzing over 500,000 online news stories, 1,000,000 tweets, and 600,000 TV airings, between January 2020 and May 2021, eight distinct narratives for poverty and economic mobility emerged. Explore these narratives and how they’ve trended over time in this interactive report. 

Poverty Narratives: Trends Over Time

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In this research, Harmony Labs collaborated with Equis to identify the key stories and main characters in media who embody and connect with the many identities of Latinos.


Equis_Main-Character-Energy_Research-Report_Final.pdf

Main Character Energy: key stories & heroes for Latino audiences

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8 profiles to inform audience-first approaches to  reaching people where they are in media culture

HarmonyLabs_Culture-First-Climate-Report_240229.pdf

Audiences for Climate Comms

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Audience Research

Narratives emerge from audiences. People make and reflect culture by telling stories. When audiences interact with stories, the patterns that emerge in how people see particular issues, we call narratives. Think of narratives as the averages of many, many stories—the things that hold true among them. Narratives also serve as atmosphere, a mood that colors perception and influences how people create and reflect culture. This means that, although the work of narrative strategy happens at the level of audience and story—varying the what, how, where, and to whom of the stories we’re telling—we need to know the whole narrative landscape to understand how the stories we tell will land.

Narrative Insights

We help creators navigate today’s media minefield and reach and resonate with the right people by delivering audience-based measurement and insights, as well as empirically validating cultural strategy and content.

Content Testing & Strategy Validation

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One-of-a-kind data infrastructure that empowers partners to find, reach, and resonate with the right audience in today’s media minefield. Delivering audience-based insights, narrative and network analysis, and empirical validation of cultural strategy and content—all derived from the actual behavior of real people and true audiences, not survey results, or inauthentic online activity.

WORK

The Narrative Observatory

Supercharging Narrative Strategy

Projects

April 2022

Latinx Encounters with Immigration Stories in U.S. Media

January 2023

Health Equity Narratives: Strategy Validation

July 2020

Beyond Demography: Black Audiences Online

June 2018

Meme Factory

April 2020

What Media Matters for Latinx Americans?

May 2022

Rewriting the Nuclear Story

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