Online activism....do we know what we're doing?

I was bombarded by an influx of videos on my Facebook page entitled "Kony 2012", accompanied by people;s personal messages such as "Kony must be stopped" or "spread this video", the headlines did captivare me, and i did partake in viewing the entire video, my perception of the content of the video however is quite contrary to what everyone else is suggesting.

Kony 2012 is a campaign put together by Invisible Children, a social activism organization that seeks to bring peace and stability to Uganda. They released a film in 2004 and just recently began this new campaign designed to destroy one of the worst criminals in the world. Wikipedia offers some useful background.

After the film, Invisible Children Inc initiated a successful campaign, petitioning the United States Government for support. Invisible Children Inc in 2012 started a social media campaign to garner support and awareness of the LRA and Joseph Kony. The campaign focuses on the website that features a roughly 30-minute video and sharing tools, and a plan for encouraging activism and bringing public awareness for the end goal of capturing Kony in 2012. The 30-minute video was uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2012 and went viral immediately. After three days, the video received over 38 million hits on YouTube. As part of the campaign, 20 celebrity “culturemakers” and 12 "policymakers" were targeted as individuals to pressure to publicize the campaign. Among those targeted were Mark Zuckerberg, Lady GaGa, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and Harry Reid. The singer Rihanna has tweeted about the issue.

This is a campaign designed to take advantage of the power of social media. What’s more, it is working to perfection, at least when it comes to the way it is spreading. There are several terms related to this campaign that are trending on Twitter and the YouTube video has almost 53 million views so far, quickly making it one of their most popular videos of all time. It is all over Facebook and now all over the mainstream media as well.

Social media campaigns tend to be dependent on one thing more than any other: speed. Do not think about it, just do it! Don’t get the facts, don’t wait a few days to consider it, don’t ask someone who knows more — just click Tweet or Share or Post or whatever else it is that will spread the word. We’re all in this together, we need your vote, we need it now! Go! Go! Go!

I think as a population consuming social media, we need to be responsible for what we allow ourselves to filter in and how we analyze these messages both denotatively and conotatively.