JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Can memes be used for political change? We might find out this year. NPR's Elena Moore joined the South Carolina Young Democrats for a recent political meme training to find out.
ELENA MOORE, BYLINE: Students enter the Zoom room. It's time for Meme University.
ORGANIZER MEMES: Welcome to Memes 101, from Internet Explorer to Meme Lord.
MOORE: That's Organizer Memes, an anonymous account run by Gen-Z and young millennials mostly based on X, formerly known as Twitter. The account has nearly 35,000 followers. They spoke to NPR anonymously due to concern of being doxxed or having personal information leaked. Since 2020, the group has trained left-leaning organizations on meme-ifying (ph) politics.
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George Washington University professor David Karpf says, even with everybody trying to meet young people where they are, the messages are very different.
DAVID KARPF: Turning Point USA is trying to make conservatism look cool to young people. The Biden administration is trying to communicate to young people he's accomplished these policy things that aren't showing up in the news but you should be excited about.
Read the full transcript at NPR.