Kony 2012

I mean, really, how could I not go there?

I was listening to Triple J Hack today and just to clarify early in the piece, this is not my main source of news as it is to some young people.  While I think Hack does an amazing job at bringing information to what is now an increasingly commercial audience (saved purely based on the fact they don't have pay-for-advertising...) it also fundamentally pisses me off the second Tom Tilley opens his trap.  He never lets other people finish what they're saying before butting in and cutting off prominent guests on his show...

Rant over.

Hack's show on Friday evening is called The Shake Up and this evening's topic of conversation was Kony 2012.  In case you have been living under a rock for the last 24 hours (or are a victim of the digital divide, which doesn't explain how you are reading this...) then you would know about this social media phenomenon called Kony 2012.  If you haven't heard of it, I suggest you watch the film which I have posted here for your convenience.  

I think what annoyed me the most about callers who phoned in to Hack today was that they said they got to go to bed at night (or some thing to that effect) feeling good about themselves because they bought the Action Kit available from Invisible Children.

Something I notice all too often with people who want to volunteer overseas, or contribute to a project in a developing country is that the reason they are doing so is for short term self gratification and not for a long term contribution.  Similarly with the Kony 2012 campaign, there are many people who went to bed last night thinking that they had in some way contributed to "fixing" another country's problem and that they where genuinely making a difference.  Enter clever post I found on Facebook this afternoon.....

To piece this piece of writing together I would like to introduce a woman who was a guest on Hack today and argued that the Kony campaign while doing good in terms of raising awareness, it has done not much more than that.  Jeanette Francis believes that the campaign lacks substance and aims to solve a problem that for starters, we don't even know if the Ugandan's want solved.  You can read more about her perspective HERE.  But I tend to agree with her.  While 65 million people have seen this campaign and each and every one of them has been touched in some way by this film it really feels as though it is merely feeding the need for self efficacy of those in developed nations.... 

In 2008 I attended a Sociology lecture that was about social movements in an e-society.  It was a powerful lecture by a PhD Candidate , Rheya Linden*.  Rheya spoke about how the internet was used as a vehicle for social movements to drive their campaigns and how the internet has changed the way social movements operate by comparison to when the Internet was not readily available.  At the time, Rheya described how people use the internet to par-take in so called activism and while they may "like" a Facebook page, or "join" a mailing list they are only doing just that.  In other words, slacktivists.  An old school friend of mine actually just updated her Facebook page and has coined the term Hacktivists!  Pure brilliance in light of my previous mention of Triple J's current affairs project, Hack.

Keeping all the aforementioned in mind, I would like to conclude by saying that I wonder if this video is truly a medium to bring about change or merely a phenomenon that will be spoken about in lecture halls as the video that changed social media, and not the world.  This is what frustrates me about the developed world's ignorance and I hope that if anything Kony 2012 has enlightened people to seek out information about the atrocities that occur every single day on our planet because after all, awareness is the beginning.


*  On a side note, Rheya's lecture's content about animal rights movements was so powerful that I have not eaten red or white meat since that lecture 3 years ago....