‘Kony 2012’ 10 Years Later

At the beginning of 2012, most of the world had never heard of Joseph Kony, a Central African warlord responsible for abducting and enslaving and employing tens of thousands of children, and displacing more than 2.5 million people, according to UNICEF’s census. people throughout the region.

But that would change on March 5. Jason Russell, founder of the nonprofit Invisible Children, directed a movie called “Kony 2012” which aimed to expose a severe crisis.

“We felt that if people in the western world knew about this atrocity, it would stop within days,” Mr. Russell, 43, said in a phone interview.

Inside videoPosted on YouTube by Invisible Children, Mr. Russell describes the conflict in simple terms appropriate for his 5-year-old son, Gavin, who appears in the video alongside inspiring images of daring Ugandan children and activists across North America. Finally, Mr. Russell is issuing a call to action: for celebrities, policy makers and anyone watching to help Joseph Kony become famous.

According to data scientist Gilad Lotan, who compiled a visual analysis of her spread, her views jumped from 66,000 to nine million when Oprah Winfrey tweeted “Kony 2012.” Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Kim Kardashian also shared. Within a week, the video had hit 100 million copies – a YouTube record at the time – and Mr. Kony became the target of a global civilian manhunt.

Ten years later, Mr. Kony is still free, Gavin started high school, and Mr. Russell is still grappling with the mixed legacy of “Kony 2012.” At a time when a constant stream of videos on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter show the real-time destruction of Ukrainian cities by Russian forces, the film reads as both a relic of what is and a relic. experts have specification As a post-Arab Spring techno-optimistic digital landscape and heralding an era of seemingly endless images of violence and conflict on social media.

Founded in 2004 by Mr. Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole, Invisible Children has shown films about Mr. Kony and his rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, at events across the country, reaching a total of five million viewers. According to Mr Russell. “Kony 2012,” he said, “was the first time we went after social media aggressively.”

In his analysis of the video’s spread, data scientist Mr. Lotan noted intense clusters of activity in Dayton, Ohio and Birmingham, Ala., two cities where the Invisible Kids toured.

The spread of the movie on the Internet opened the organization to all kinds of criticism. People online discussed the film’s racial politics, the ethics of humanity, and the utility of “slack,” where likes and shares equate to action.

“The most important criticism I’ve read over the years is an oversimplification of a complex subject,” said Mr Russell. “I would say ‘I hear you, but to make something go viral’ – our goal was to simplify a complex subject – ‘that’s what you have to do’. In a way, it’s a criticism, but I saw it as a compliment.”

At the time, the film’s attention was overwhelming for Mr. Russell, who, a week after its release, was seen walking around his neighborhood naked and shouting obscene. “There are very few examples of people being publicly embarrassed and not having some sort of breakdown,” he said.

According to Mr. Russell, the footage was sold to TMZ and #Horny2012 surpassed #Kony2012 in trending hashtags on Twitter, as false reports surfaced of him masturbating in public. What started as a serious attempt at consciousness raising had become a meme.

But the film has clearly struck a chord with audiences by tapping into what Jonah Berger, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of “Infectious: Why Things Get Caught” Jonah Berger calls STEPS: the social currency triggers. , emotion, public practical value and story. These factors speak to our psychological makeup and fundamental human motivations, Professor Berger said.

Eric Meyerson, former head of co-marketing at YouTube, said at the time, “Kony 2012” was based on the emotional qualities of the internet’s most resonant videos. In the first three minutes, there are images of the Arab Spring and a child riding a bicycle for the first time.

“They’re the kind of good-humored videos that we were trying to promote on YouTube at the time, bringing people back to a platform to post to Webbys,” said Mr. Meyerson. He added that in some cases, viewers feel like they are “helping to change the world” by consuming and sharing content.

When Mr. Meyerson joined Facebook to lead the video marketing team in 2015, that serious sense of possibility was still in place. But after the launch of Facebook Live in August, the mood changed when live-streamed graphics began to appear.

“Then we had the rise of fake news, Brexit, Trump’s election,” he said. focused on echo chambers and “post-truth” politics.

“The early 2010s were incredibly important in changing our current information landscape and it is not getting the attention it deserves,” said Mr. Meyerson.

Now, the first images of conflicts and crises often come to us via social media and are informed by the platforms they are shared with. “The advent of digital warfare has challenged the mainstream media and other elite actors in their capacity to shape what war looks like,” said Andrew Hoskins, an interdisciplinary research professor at the University of Glasgow.

“It’s very interesting to look at Twitter right now,” he said, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. first TikTok war. Open-source intelligence, such as citizen journalism on TikTok, “a tremendous amount of images filling our consciousness of conflict,” he said, “could revolutionize warfare, but make no difference.”

In 2017, the United States and Uganda reduced their mission to capture Mr. Kony, stating that they no longer represent Mr. Kony. regional threat. “The atrocities committed by the LRA have decreased by 80 percent,” said Samuel Enosa Peni, archbishop of Western Equatoria Province, in an email. (He lost three of his brothers to the army.)

Today, Invisible Children is fully focused on local programs in Central Africa. It plays a minor role in social media strategy.

Mr. Russell also turned down his digital presence. “Now that I have the media literacy to disprove things like QAnon theories,” he said, “I can’t help the fact that the Internet still triggers me.”