Depth of Connection Is the Asset

A new USC and Define American study proves audiences are not moved by exposure to a character. They are moved by the depth of connection with one.

The market implications of this new study reach well beyond Hollywood.I read entertainment research the way I read a market report, because that is what it is.

Last week, I reviewed Change the Narrative, Change the World 2026, the fourth study from Define American and the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center. Researchers coded 201 characters across 80 episodes of 62 scripted series that aired between July 2023 and June 2025.

For the first time, they also coded the U.S.-born children of immigrant characters, which is the right call. As an immigrant, I can tell you that immigration is a family event, not an individual one.

The headline most people will take from it is that the representation of immigrants on television is uneven, which is a true statement but, candidly, incomplete. The more interesting finding, to me, is what kind of representation actually changes behavior. The answer is depth. How many characters appear is important, but how fully audiences come to know them is critical to move people into action. That is Culturenomics™.

In sum, this research supports our thesis that culture is a critical lever for building trust, moving people to action, and driving business, reputation, and growth. But, how much culture? What it is and what it isn’t- those are the questions worth discussing here.

Depth drives behavior. Exposure does not.

The study paired its content analysis with an impact test built around the Netflix series Mo. Among viewers who watched the immigration storyline, 62 percent said it increased their understanding of what immigrants and asylees navigate, and 54 percent said they were more likely to support refugees or asylees in their own community. The effect was strongest among viewers with little real-life contact with immigrants.

Those shifts did not come from a statistic or a public message. They came from time spent with one fully drawn character. This is Culturenomics™ at work. Culture is not decoration on top of the economy. It is an operating system that moves attention, builds trust, and motivates behavior. The variable that compounds this effect and yields real, sustainable results is depth.

Breadth is not depth, and only depth pays.

The study counted characters of 49 nationalities and 20 languages. That is real expansion, and it is worth naming. But 77 percent of immigrant characters sat in supporting roles, and only 10 percent led or co-led, and most appeared in a single episode.

Every communications leader knows this trap by another name. We mistake reach for relationship. We celebrate impressions and call it engagement. A character in one scene is a logo on a banner. It is technically present and functionally invisible. The behavior change in the Mo data did not come from the count of characters on screen. It came from the depth of a single relationship that the audience was given time to build.

Depth is fragile, so concentration is a risk.

Two of the most significant immigrant stories on television, Mo and Bob Hearts Abishola, both ended in the 2024 to 2025 season. When they left, a large share of the representation they carried left with them.

This is the tension at the center of the report. Depth is what pays, and depth is what disappears first. When you concentrate your entire relationship with an audience in one show, one spokesperson, one campaign, or one channel, you are one cancellation away from starting over. The answer is not to trade depth for breadth. It is to build depth in more than one place. The same principle that governs a media mix governs true cultural presence meant to build authentic connection.

The criminal default still carries a cost.

One in four immigrant characters who held a job was shown as a criminal, and 58 percent of immigrant characters appeared in crime or police procedural shows. This pattern collides with the report’s most concerning trend. Latino representation fell from 50 percent of immigrant characters in 2020 to 23 percent today, even as Latino immigrants remain the largest immigrant population in the country at roughly 44 percent.

A large share of the Latino characters that remain come from a single police franchise. Remove it, and Latino representation in the sample drops to 17 percent. The study notes this criminal association runs directly against the long-run evidence, which shows immigrants are incarcerated at lower rates than native-born Americans.

For anyone managing reputation, this is the lesson in lazy narrative defaults. The cheapest story to reach for is often the most expensive one to carry. It is also the shallowest, and shallow does not move anyone.

A practice is not a bench.

As the largest agencies in the world stand up new culture practices, they are conceding the point this research makes. Culture is an economic operating system, and depth within it is an asset. The harder question is whether they can deliver it. Depth is not an org chart. It is who is actually in the room, and whether the bench mirrors the communities it claims to read. You cannot consult your way to a connection your own team has never lived.

The technology does not close that gap. It widens it. The tools now being sold as cultural intelligence were trained on the same screen landscape this report measures, the one where Latino representation collapsed, and the criminal default persisted. A model learns the patterns it is fed. Point it at a biased record, and it will return bias with confidence. Automation scales whatever depth you already have. If the depth is not there, it scales the absence.

The pattern is familiar

Multicultural audiences are too often treated as a line item to activate, rather than a relationship to build and maintain. The activation ends, the budget moves, and the connection disappears because it was never built with any depth to begin with. This report measures what that costs.

The data also points to the alternative. One showrunner in the report makes the case plainly that authentic representation was not only the right creative choice but also good for the business. That is the whole argument in one sentence. Depth is not a cost center. It is an asset that yields important returns.

Hollywood is the case study here, but the principle is portable. Whether you make television, sell a product, or run a national institution, the choice is the same. You can hire a partner who just announced a culture practice, or one who has lived and breathed culture for years. One has a new line on a capabilities deck. The other has a bench that already mirrors the audience you are trying to reach. Depth is not something you launch. It is something you are.

So before the next strategy, the next campaign, the next platform, ask the question that actually predicts the result. Who is in your room?

Source: Define American and the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center, Change the Narrative, Change the World 2026.