sparks & honey is a technology-based cultural consultancy that leverages a unique suite of proprietary tools, algorithms and a global network of human scouts to identify emerging cultural trends and industry shifts. Their intelligence platform Q™ helps structure data from thousands of sources to visualize cultural change in real time.

sparks & honey will work with the Pop Culture Collaborative and a small group of pop culture for social change fandom members from across social movements and entertainment to unearth how and why pluralistic behaviors show up in society using pop culture fandom as the initial test laboratory.

We need to understand the problems we face as a country — of polarization, fragmentation, hostility toward change, intolerance toward difference — and explore ways in which we can encourage more pluralistic mindsets and behaviors in our civics. The idea of exploring the pluralism framework using pop culture fandom as a microcosm of the larger social landscape is a challenge that’s an exact match for our cultural analytics platform and methodology.” — Jeff Yang, Head of Global Futures, sparks & honey