If you looked at Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube on March 6, you know who Joseph Kony is.
The nonprofit organization Invisible Children posted a video called KONY 2012 about Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony, who has abducted tens of thousands of children over the past 30 years to become soldiers in the rebel group Lord's Resistance Army. The video went viral in less than a day, spreading across the vast Internet world. It capitalizes on the power of social media by urging viewers to keep sharing the video, hoping to make Kony famous and bring his crimes to justice by year's end.
The video relies heavily on the use of pathos to make its emotional claim that Kony's terrible crimes should be stopped by Internet-users-turned-activists. It inspires emotional responses of outrage, compassion, anger, and even fear from its audiences as they watch the horrors that face Kony's child soldiers. The Daily What calls it "emotional blackmail." The video also relies on ethos. Throughout the video, celebrity speakers, such as George Clooney, add credibility to the campaign's goal of stopping Kony.
However, all is not as it seems. KONY 2012 did garner millions of supporters as it went viral, but the nonprofit behind the video is not exactly using donors' money wisely. According to The Daily What, Invisible Children has been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for failing to make its financial records public, which is what nonprofits should do, and only 31% of donations go to actually helping people.
We'll just have to wait till the end of 2012 to see if the KONY 2012 campaign reaches its goal of ridding the world of its "worst" war criminal.
I'll admit that the KONY campaign is emotionally stirring and became an overnight phenomenon that suddenly everyone cared about. However, it is suspicious that although warlords in Africa have had children in their armies for years, that the world now decides that this is now a priority. There has been a lot of speculation that a sinister ulterior motive behind this campaign. That sending troops to Uganda is only a guise in order to secure a new source of oil. With the rising gas prices and the increased tension with the Middle East, one can't help but wonder if the government has given their support for this mission simply because it is the moral thing to do.
ReplyDelete^^^^ Scott Liang
DeleteHaving done a major paper on this project, I was wondering how long this KONY 2012 craze would last. I made a point in my work that the cause was teetering with "slacktivism," meaning there was so much sudden support that people felt like their individual contributions would be futile and people would be looking to each other to take the lead and be the change that the organization calls for. Also, the producer's public image was damaged when he was arrested soon after the video went viral. KONY 2012 has indeed been just a short lived fad online, and the ultimate goal of capturing Kony this year still hangs in the balance.
ReplyDelete-Austin Woodruff