Kony 2012 is a film-based campaign by nonprofit group Invisible Children that attempts to raise awareness about the crimes committed by Ugandan war criminal Jospeh Kony. The end goal of the campaign is to bring Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resitance Army (LRA), to justice. The film describes the tactics Kony uses, and why he is such a villain. In short, Kony forcibly removes children from their homes and makes them become either sex slaves or soldiers in his child army to maintain power. The film uses Jacob, a Ugandan whose brother was killed by the LRA, in order to attempt to relate the video. In addition, throughout the video we hear from the director’s young son, Gavin, as he attempts to comprehend the information his father is putting in front of him.
Since its release on March 5, the video has spread rapidly, reaching over 100 million views in just under a week, making it the most viral video ever. As the Communicator staff, we acknowledge the campaign’s success in raising awareness, but we, like many people, have our doubts about the campaign.
While we do believe that the video and campaign have good intentions, we have become aware of many holes and errors within it. Though it may seem necessary to “dumb down” the information at hand for the general population, we feel strongly against the over-simplification of the subject matter, and the omission of key aspects. The most gaping hole we became aware of is that the war in Uganda and Kony’s terror are no longer at their peak of destruction.
A popular criticism of the campaign is that it endorses the idea of the “white man’s burden”—that white Westerners are more powerful than the suffering peoples and are the only ones that can fix the problem. However, we feel that the campaign has nothing to do with the burden of any race in particular, but rather that this issue is a responsibility to be taken by anyone and everyone, and that any person or group of people who feels brave enough to take it on is more than welcome to try and help. It shouldn’t matter who is providing the help, as long as it is being provided.
The United States is often criticized for butting into other peoples’ business. If or when unnecessary, that intrusion is certainly not something we encourage, but in the case of something so astounding as this, we feel that some interference is welcome. Yhe campaign’s video asked so many people to be call for Kony’s arrest so that our government could not ignore it any longer. We think that while supplies and technologies are certainly welcome, sending troops to intervene is pushing the boundaries.
We have found that in addition to presenting an important message, but it unintentionally tells us a lot about society and the political science behind the spreading of awareness. Based on what we know about how the video was predominantly shared and spread, and the demographics of those social media sites, we can assume that a vast percentage of people aware of and involved with the campaign are teenagers. While we recognize and write off many of these “supporters” as doing so for attention, we support those truly behind this campaign, and simply advise everyone to make sure they look into an organization before blindly accepting it or donating to it.
