incubating solutions

Digital Audiences & Media Diets

We partnered with Harmony Labs to develop a research-driven framework to understand how different male audiences engage with masculinity, identity, community, and culture in media.

What's at stake

Conversations about boys and men online often treat them as a single audience. In reality, people engage with gender, relationships, media, and community in profoundly different ways. Without a deeper understanding of these differences, efforts to support healthy masculinities risk missing the audiences they hope to reach. Effective interventions require a nuanced understanding of how people form identities, consume media, and make meaning online.

Creators who rarely discuss politics can be up to three times more persuasive

Than overtly political influencers because they build trust through shared interests and authentic relationships rather than explicit advocacy.

Source

Trust is increasingly built through creators, not institutions

Research shows audiences are more receptive to messages delivered by creators they already follow than by traditional campaigns or organizations, highlighting the importance of meeting people within existing media ecosystems.

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Building healthier online cultures begins with understanding the audiences that inhabit them—their values, motivations, aspirations, and unmet needs. — Caroline Hayes, Equimundo

Our Innovation

LinkUp Lab partnered with Harmony Labs to develop a strategic audience framework that helps practitioners understand how different online communities engage with masculinity, relationships, media, and identity. The framework will support targeted partnerships, interventions, and evaluation efforts with content creators and storytellers.

Audience Segmentation and Mapping

Building on Harmony Labs' existing values-based audience research, the project identifies distinct audience groups and explores how they understand gender, masculinity, relationships, and social change. This provides a foundation for more precise and effective content engagement strategies.

Audience Opportunities & Risks

Each audience faces unique opportunities and vulnerabilities within digital environments. The framework explores how media cultures, narratives, and online ecosystems can either support or undermine healthy development, belonging, and engagement.

Strategy, Partnerships & Evaluation

The resulting framework will help LinkUp Lab prioritize where to focus its efforts, identify promising partners, design audience-specific interventions, and evaluate impact with greater precision and confidence.

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Media

Men's Flourishing & Media Report

How online media behaviors relate to flourishing for 5 audiences of men.

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Recording: Men's Flourishing & Media Report

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about the innovator

Harmony Labs

Harmony Labs is a nonprofit media research lab using science, data, and creativity to research and reshape society’s relationship with media. For more than a decade, their work has helped storytellers and strategists, decision makers and dreamers, harness the immense power of media to shape a positive, pluralistic future and support human flourishing.

Learn More

Get involved with LinkUp Lab!

Whether you have any idea to test or scale, are a content creator looking to leverage your platform for good, are a parent seeking guidance on digital topics, or are interested in supporting the growth of LinkUp Lab, we would be grateful to connect with you!

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