StoryLine: Exploring the intersection of visual storytelling and machine learning – MIT Media Lab

StoryLine, a collaboration between McKinsey & Company's Consumer Tech and Media team and the Lab for Social Machines (LSM), explores the intersection of visual storytelling and machine learning through work aimed at helping storytellers understand and improve the impact of their stories on their audiences. StoryLine was inspired by LSM's groundbreaking Electome project, in which researchers used advanced machine learning to build network maps of engaged election audiences and then track the diffusion of relevant conversation and content through these networks. For Electome, the result was a powerful new way of understanding how audiences form around specific political, social and cultural ideas. For StoryLine, we wondered whether this approach could translate meaningfully into measuring impact in the storytelling domain, which outside of marketing optimization has been underserved in any practical way by recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Understanding audience impact has arguably never been more important to those involved in the creation, production, distribution and marketing of visual stories--from the largest studios, networks and platforms to the independent creators who publish and promote on their own.