Before March 6, only a handful of people knew his name.
But by late that evening, Joseph Kony became a household figure, thanks to a video campaign started by an American group called Invisible Children.
“Before I clicked on the video, there wasn’t much going on,” said Erin Drawson, a second-year Greek and Roman studies student at Carleton. “And by the end, the website had crashed and it was all over Facebook.”
The video, featuring Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell, is a call to action with the purpose of making Kony “famous” to raise support for his arrest.
Kony, a Ugandan warlord, allegedly abducted over 60,000 children to create the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), according to the video.
Invisible Children became a certified non-profit organization in 2006 and is dedicated to making movies to raise awareness about the issues plaguing Africa, according to Kyla Hackett, Invisible Children’s Canadian representative.
While the Kony 2012 campaign gained massive outpourings of support, the support was matched by criticism.
Grant Oyston, a second-year student at Acadia University, made a blog called Visible Children to outline critiques of the Kony 2012 campaign.
“It was never intended to be a public thing that someone would share,” said Oyston, a former Carleton journalism student. “The original reason was a lot of interesting discussion going on and I wanted to write a little explanation of the criticism.”
One of Oyston’s articles garnered over 2.3 million views in three days.
Oyston’s blog echoed public criticism surrounding the campaign. These criticisms are that Invisible Children is using donations to fund the Ugandan military and that the LRA is “on the decline,” so giving money to the campaign would be useless.
“At the end of the day, it’s not about Invisible Children,” Hackett said. “It’s about bringing to justice a war criminal.”
Invisible Children emphasized that no donations to their organization go to the Ugandan government or military. Money raised goes to their advocacy and awareness campaigns and other projects in Uganda, Hackett said.
“Any criticism that we are getting is important because people are thinking,” Hackett said. “People are using their judgement and their critical thought to try to learn more about what exactly is going on.”
Invisible Children posted a rebuttal to Visible Children, has met with Oyston and offered to fly him in to look at their projects in Africa.
“My opinion is not the important one . . . what I feel is largely irrelevant to world discourse on Central African conflict,” Oyston said, adding that he declined Invisible Children’s offer.
Amidst the criticism, Carleton journalism professor Allan Thompson said the campaign achieved what it sought to do.
“This morning at breakfast my 12-year-old son just announced, ‘Dad, you have to get me a Kony 2012 bracelet,’” Thompson said.
“It’s connecting, not just with young people, but with pre-teens and with elementary school kids.”
Despite the success of the awareness created from the campaign, supporters should still be thinking twice before throwing themselves behind the cause, Thompson cautioned.
“I think people have to be careful and ask critical questions about these campaigns because it would not be a good thing if an organization were taking advantage of interest by young people and somehow using it to make money,” Thompson said.
“I think it always is complicated in order to have to spend money to raise awareness and generate funds for a cause like this,” he continued. “That half-hour film gripped my 12-year-old. So if some of the resources of that organization’s went into making that film, then it was money well spent.”
A worldwide event for the Kony 2012 campaign, entitled “Cover the Night,” is slated to take place April 20. The event calls on participants to plaster their city’s streets with posters and stickers during the night to bring government attention to Kony and the LRA.
— with files from Arik Ligeti
