African voices respond to hyper-popular Kony 2012 viral campaign. (Updated with additions, March 10, 2012. Here's a Twitter list, so you can follow all of the African writers mentioned in this post who are on Twitter.) The internets are all a-flutter with reactions to Kony 2012, a high-velocity viral fundraising campaign created by the "rebel soul dream evangelists" at Invisible Children to "raise awareness" about Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and child soldiers. As noted in my previous post here on Boing Boing, the project has many critics. There is a drinking game, there are epic lolpictorials, and a chorus of idiots on Facebook. There are indications the project may be about stealth-evangelizing Christianity. But in that flood of attention, one set of voices has gone largely ignored: Africans themselves.
Above, a video by Rosebell Kagumire, a Ugandan multimedia journalist who works on "media, women, peace and conflict issues. " TMS Ruge, the Ugandan-born co-founder of Project Diaspora is pissed. Bonus Round: Link to full, multi-panel LOLpic. Kony 2012: what's the real story? | Politics. Since Monday, more than 21m people have viewed this film – made by an American charity called Invisible Children – about the plight of children in Uganda at the hands of the warlord Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) guerilla group.
His group is said to have abducted 60,000 children. With its slick Hollywood production values, the film has been an almost instant viral success, dominating Twitter worldwide and having one of the fastest ever take-offs on You Tube. The hashtag #stopkony has had hundreds of thousands of tweets, and millions of people now know something about Uganda and what is happening to children there. Support for the campaign to end the conflict in the country this year is spreading. We've reported on the video here: Kony stands accused of overseeing the systematic kidnapping of countless African children, brainwashing the boys into fighting for him, turning the girls into sex slaves and killing those who don't comply. Peter Bradshaw writes: 2.05pm: Our online wiki guide won't be the new Kony 2012 – but it doesn't need to be | Voluntary Sector Network | Guardian Professional. Less than two weeks ago a small non-profit organisation from San Diego released a 30 minute video on YouTube calling for the capture of Ugandan guerrilla leader Joseph Kony.
Within 10 days, Kony 2012 had received more than 75 million views. The video has now received 625,000 comments. The hashtag #kony2012 has been tweeted nearly half a million times. One of the many Facebook groups set up in response to the video has over 700,000 likes. Whatever your take on the campaign itself, the numbers are beyond impressive. They reflect not simply a huge passive viewership; but also many hundreds of thousands of actions that people who watch the video feel compelled to make. Every tweet, every comment, every Facebook like subtly turns passive viewers into collaborators who are helping shape the evolving conversation around Kony 2012. Today, we at NCVO's KnowHow NonProfit make our little offering to this new era of cultural production – in the form of a wiki version of our site.
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