Interesting few days in the world of social media. Just a couple of days ago non-profit organization, Invisible Children, posted the following video on YouTube and it took off like wildfire.
When I first saw the video through a Twitter post on Tuesday evening, it only had a few hundred thousand views, by Wednesday morning the video had been viewed over 4 000 000 times, and when I last checked, it had over 36 000 000 views world wide.
Myself included, people who viewed the video were quick to jump on the bandwagon to promote the cause of Invisible Children. The organization's goal is to raise awareness of the crisis in Central Africa where Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) are terrorizing villages, abducting children, and murdering anyone who resists. How could you not support an organization that is trying to bring justice to such horrible criminals?
But only hours after the video was released, critics of the non-profit organization began to step up and speak out against supporting the group. People are questioning Invisible Children's financial records, and the tactics that they have chosen to put a stop to Kony and his followers. No article that I have read to this point has suggested that the Invisible Children organization does not have good intentions, however, they do raise some interesting questions.
What no one can deny is the power of social media and how it is being displayed with this video. With access to platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, young people on our planet have a louder voice than ever before. 48 hours ago my students had no idea who Joseph Kony was, and many of them had no idea where Uganda is either, now he is a household name and kids want to make a change. This could be a major shift in the way the world holds it's citizens accountable, and Kony may only be the beginning.
Of course, only time will tell if this will stick. In today's fast moving world, where the latest and greatest reign then quickly fade, will the people of the world have a long enough attention span to effect a real change in Africa? Personally, I hope they do. I think this could be a real change for the human race. We are no longer just citizens of a city or a country, but we are now global citizens and it's time that we start acting like it.
To my students... what will you do about these terrible crimes against humanity? Anything?... Nothing? What can we do as a school to make a difference? Should we act on this initiative? Read the articles linked below, become informed, then comment.
To learn more about KONY 2012, check out some of the following links:
- KONY 2012 Invisible Children Web Site
- CBC's George Stroumboulopoulos' Blog on KONY 2012
- KONY 2012 Movement's Response to Critics
- Visible Children - KONY 2012, Viewed Critically by Grant Oyston
- Let's Talk About KONY by Daniel Solomon, Georgetown student and National Director of STAND
- The Problem With Invisible Children's "Kony 2012" by Michael Deibert, author of Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair
- Kony 2012 and the politics of sending a brutal villain viral by Nicky Woolf, reporter for the Guardian
