How do we reach young people?

Hello friends,

Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee.

I’m off this week but have invited Heather and Michael Lahanas-Calderón (Director of Digital Strategy at Inequality Media Civic Action) to chat in my absence. Michael, a member of Gen Z, leads our work on TikTok. He and the team at IMCA have been using video across social media to break down complex issues and change the frames through which people understand the system, so viewers can see what’s at stake and mobilize towards an inclusive democracy and an economy where the gains are widely shared, including in advance of the midterms.

Today they cover:

* How young people process information (hint: it involves the internet).

* How to fill the knowledge gaps around economics and inequality left by the mass media.

* The dirty secret of social media video (most people watch with the sound off!).

* What makes a video break through on crowded platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

Here are a couple recent videos:

* A 10-second TikTok video which uses several “trends” to depict how trickle-down economics is a hoax (the speed of which I find dizzying and Heather says makes her motion sick. Do you agree?!).

* A video of CEOs crowing about raising prices on consumers to boost their profit margin; they speak for themselves on the relationship between corporate profiteering and inflation. (The Groundwork Collaborative has built a very useful website for these publicly-available quarterly corporate earnings calls.)

Thank you to Deirdre Broderick / Corey Kaup and Joseph Lawson for today’s theme songs, and to all of you for listening.

P.S. For those of you who have been asking about written transcripts of these coffee klatches, we will have them for you in the coming weeks. Thank you for your patience.

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