Imagining 2076
Encouraging storytelling and narratives about pro-topian futures in Hollywood.
Initial Pilot
Nearly half of Americans receive their civic information outside of traditional education and news media. Only 59% of Americans reported taking a civics education class in high school in 2021. This coincides with decreasing trust in traditional news media: 38% of Americans said they often or sometimes avoid the news in 2022 with only 42% saying they trust most news most of the time. Entertainment media, therefore, plays an essential role in developing Americans' understanding of whether, and how, our civic institutions are a place of cooperative problem-solving or a vehicle of division and self-aggrandizement
The key mandate of Imagining 2076 is simple: how do depictions of democracy and the future in film and television impact audience attitudes towards government and civic engagement? In partnership with Harmony Labs, a non-profit media research organization, we will develop methodologies to code and quantify various depictions of government (from authoritarian to democratic) and depictions of the future (from protopian to dystopian), and to test their impact on audiences’ attitudes about democracy, hope for the future, and desire to participate in democracy.
Proposed Future Work
Democracy 2076 will work with Harmony Labs to conduct an analysis of representations in film and television over the last 25 years to allow us to correlate changes in representations of democratic institutions with declining public trust in institutions and declining optimism about the next generation’s future.
We will use Harmony Labs’ robust values-based audience segmentation and associated media content engagement data to make a compelling business case to Hollywood that there is a market for and audience growth in desire for pro-topian depictions of government and the future.
Anecdotally, Harmony Labs has seen data that Gen Z has a huge appetite for all imaginative depictions of the future, from Steam Punk to Solarpunk. This project will seek to highlight Gen Z’s appetite and elevate the pro-topian stories that are already gaining traction with audiences.
Partner with a social impact firm with relationships in Hollywood, to produce an event and screenwriting contest.
Our Partner
Imagining 2076
Harmony Labs — Harmony Labs is a media research lab, using science, data, and creativity to research and reshape our relationship with media. For more than a decade, Harmony Labs has helped storytellers and strategists, decision makers and dreamers, harness the immense power of media to shape a positive, pluralistic future. With the Narrative Observatory, for the first time ever, Harmony Labs is harnessing powerful industry relationships to deliver one-of-a-kind data infrastructure that empowers partners to find, reach, and resonate with the right audience in today’s media minefield. The Narrative Observatory delivers 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, demographic groups, or inauthentic online activity.