Supporters, critics react to popular online campaign
A video, titled “KONY 2012,” went viral Tuesday night as it amassed more than 12 million online views in the past two days and surfaced on Twitter streams, Facebook feeds and blogs throughout the world.
In the 30-minute video Jason Russell, who is a co-founder of the nonprofit organization Invisible Children, asks viewers to focus on 20 celebrities and 12 politicians in the hopes that they will take up the cause and disseminate its message to arrest Ugandan guerilla leader Joseph Kony before the end of 2012.
“We are going to make Joseph Kony a household name,” Russell said in the video. “Not to celebrate him, but to bring his crimes to the light.”
Scott Siegel, treasurer for the Rutgers University Student Assembly, said he first saw the campaign video on Facebook.
“I was on Facebook [Tuesday] night, and I saw a few of my friends had posted about this Kony, whatever Kony was,” said Siegel, a School of Arts and Sciences junior.
The online “KONY 2012” campaign video features clips from the 2007 documentary “Invisible Children,” in which Russell shares the story of Jacob, a Ugandan boy, who witnessed his brother’s death in the hands of Kony’s supporters.
Kony’s guerilla group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, has allegedly kidnapped more than 66,000 Ugandan children, according to the World Bank, and forced them to kill, rape and fight to make Uganda a Christian state.
The Invisible Children Foundation’s four-yearlong campaign sparked a national movement asking people to reach out to legislators to encourage American aid in Uganda to end Kony’s chokehold.
Barack Obama’s administration sent 100 military advisers in October 2011 to several African countries to help fight against the LRA, according to npr.org.
“Never before has [the campaign] been viral,” said Jasmine Chow, a Mason Gross School of the Arts junior who has been involved with the campaign since 2007. “It’s blowing up now.”
But as quickly as the video spread throughout the international community, critics voiced their concerns — pointing a finger at Invisible Children, condemning the group for a lack of transparency and poor internal relations.
Bloggers, like Grant Oyston of visiblechildren.tumblr.com, brought forward photographs of the organization’s founders holding weapons and links to articles that challenge the reliability of the charity.
“These problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, filmmaking and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow,” wrote Oyston, a student at Acadia University in Canada.
Jack Bratich, an associate professor in the School of Communication and Information, believes that because there are plenty of governments enacting abuses in the world, the fact that this cause is suddenly getting attention is puzzling.
“What I found interesting was that some of these students don’t typically share political content,” Bratich said via email correspondence. “All of them had some version of a mysterious command to ‘watch this.’”
Bratich questioned the video’s intent and theorized that perhaps the video is targeting college students.
“It seems like a meme designed to spark outrage, while few know much about the conditions in Uganda,” he said. “And it’s a little premature to have a reaction to it. Yes, it’s getting a lot of hits, but ‘why’ is the question.”
Russell repeated in the video that the best way to defeat Kony and stop the LRA’s crimes is to make Kony well-known through marketing and reaching out to individuals who can make a difference.
“We are targeting 20 culture-makers and 12 policy-makers to use their power for good,” Russell said in the video, as images of celebrities and politicians — including Stephen Colbert, Mark Zuckerberg, Condoleezza Rice and John Kerry — flashed on the screen.
The “KONY 2012” video ended with promotion of the national “Cover the Night” event scheduled for April 20. The event, intended to happen between sunset and sunrise, encourages activists to blanket their towns with paraphernalia sporting the “KONY 2012” campaign message.
The campaign’s website offers “action kits,” which include posters, bracelets and shirts displaying the official campaign message.
University students created Facebook groups for the University and New Brunswick “Cover the Night” events.
University and New Brunswick organizers are still working out the specifics of the events, such as the meeting place, said Chow, one of the Facebook group creators.
“I think that while Facebook and Twitter may attract people to get involved for only a short period of time. [The sites are] making a positive impact because they created a platform for more people to educate themselves on the situation,” Chow said.
Siegel expressed concern for the campaign’s physical effect on the community.
“Because you’re going to have people flyering New Brunswick and putting up posters, I see the potential for the [New Brunswick Police Department] or [Rutgers University Police Department] being a little bit upset with the potential vandalism that would occur,” Siegel said.
Siegel plans to work with the event’s local organizers to channel the energy into something productive.
Because of the criticisms of Invisible Children, Siegel is cautious of donating money directly to the foundation, but still finds merit in the movement.
“I haven’t seen a campaign like this put together,” Siegel said. “To me, it’s innovative. It’s revolutionary … and very interesting to see how social media can influence policy-makers and culture-makers. This really is a model for other social causes to emulate in the future.”
Chow said the Invisible Children Foundation displays certain information and might not be able to provide all the information about the Ugandan government and all the responsible parties for creating the situation in Uganda.
“There are other people involved in [creating] the situation [in Uganda]. It’s not just one man,” she said. “But I do think this campaign is going to make people who really do care find that information on their own.”
But some students, like Marvin Jules, are skeptical of the campaign’s effectiveness.
“Obviously the man is a monster. Obviously [Kony] has done terrible things,” said Jules, a School of Arts and Sciences junior. “It’s great that [the campaign] is shedding light on the situation.”
But he does not anticipate for the campaign to continue long enough to make an impact.
Jules alluded to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, in which thousands were affected, including members of his family.
“Right when the earthquake happened, the media was all over it,” he said. “People wanted to come to their aid. Initial reaction was strong … but as the weeks went on, then months, people stopped thinking about it.”
Jules said the problems following the earthquake in Haiti are far from being solved because while the earthquake happened more than two years ago, people still live on the streets and in places that look like war zones.
“Things like this happen all the time,” Jules said. “It’s sad to me that it’s just now that people are opening their eyes.”
