Radio FM4

Kate Farmer

Cutting to the chase

Alle Stories

Erstellt am: 8. 3. 2012 - 15:37 Uhr

Will the viral video of 2012 catch a virtual cold?

Reality Check: Kony 2012, Syrian minister defects, International Women's Day

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You can't miss it. It's everywhere. Since yesterday, "Kony 2012" has not so much gone viral, as developed into a global pandemic. The latest video from Invisible Children, fuelled by the tweets of a whole raft of celebrities from Oprah to Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, must by now have popped up on almost every Facebook and Twitter account in the world.

Following hot on the heels of this tsunami of support, came the criticisms. Some accuse Invisible Children of being a money making scam, some question their motives, and some applaud the sentiment of Kony 2012, but say it is misguided and distracts attention from the real and very complex issues it is trying to address.

So what's it all about? In case you haven't caught up with it already, it's about Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lords Resistance Army, one of the most notorious war criminals around. He's already been indicted by the International Criminal Court, and US President Obama has put troops into Uganda to help track him down, although his motives for doing so may also be not as clear cut as just wanting to get rid of a brutal murderer.

What is undoubtedly the case with Kony 2012 is that it is a superbly crafted social media campaign. It ticks all the boxes for what makes something go viral - but in boiling the problem down to such black and white issues, could it ultimately defeat its own objective of helping secure a safer future for the people currently targeted by the LRA? Some Uganda scholars say that by focusing too closely on Kony himself the campaign could be misleading and counter productive. Two such scholars are Patrick Wegner and Mark Kersten.

Whichever view you take on Kony 2012, it has certainly already proved the enormous power of social media when it comes to spreading a message, and that more people knowing who Joseph Kony is unlikely to do any harm, even if it does not do as much good as the campaign organisers hope. Whether the people finding out who Kony is by this means have an over-simplified view of the true situation in Uganda may not be of crucial importance if all that is at stake is "like" and "shares".

Where it does become a little unsettling is that is also illustrates how social media can be used to sway opinion - or, not to put too fine a point on it, for propaganda. How many people receiving and viewing the Kony 2012 film on their Facebook or Twitter feeds will actually check the information? How many will research the context of the conflict and the other parties involved? How many will look up the background to it, the opinions of Ugandans and the people who have been trying for decades to resolve the conflict? How many will be carried along on a tide of well intended and heartfelt publicity and become convinced that "stopping Kony" at any price is a viable solution.

This year is election year in the USA - something else you cannot fail to have noticed. Let's say, for instance, that two candidates go up against each other for the presidency. One is in favour of launching an attack on Uganda to get Joseph Kony, and one is against it. Influenced by a red hot viral video which provided a point of view, but not the whole picture, millions of Americans vote for the one who's going to send troops into Uganda. Despite the arguments of the experts and academics, the people of the US want Kony stopped and removed. Following popular sentiment, the troops are sent in to yet another conflict that is pretty much unwinnable.

The war in Afghanistan was all about stopping one man: Osama bin Laden. It looked so simple. All the military resources of the USA pitched against one man. 10 years and tens of thousands of deaths later, they eventually got him. Did killing him stop the extremism he represented or make Afghanistan a safer, more democratic place? The jury is definitely still out on that one.

Kony is unquestionably a despicable individual who should be brought to justice, and Kony 2012 is one way of participating in the campaign against him. In the first 48 hours, nearly 35 million people have viewed the video.

In today's Reality Check, Dave Dempsey explains the factors that make us go for the "like" and "share" buttons, and the importance of the pro- and anti- forum that the Internet also creates if we remember that there are at least two sides to every story.