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Since Monday 49 million people have all watched one video on YouTube. Even for the latest Justin Beiber track, this volume of traffic notably irregular, but 49 million people, won’t all watch the same video for no reason.
The video in question was made and posted by American charity, Invisible Children and is an epic blockbuster of a campaign about children in Uganda suffering under the hand of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony.
If you haven’t heard about this already, no doubt you will begin to see Joseph Kony’s name thrown around the media, hashtags like #stopkony trending on your Twitter and references being posted on your Facebook, but the real question is can a successful viral video and social media really instigate societal change?
The 29 minute long video is particularly slick, with almost Hollywood style production values, and one of the fastest take-offs in YouTube’s history. Not only prompting millions of views, Twitter has seen hundreds of thousands of tweets on the subject, and if Invisible Children’s aim was only to educate the world on the plight of Uganda’s children, then the video has already been a resounding success!
Support for the campaign, and an end in the conflict in the country has spread widely, and media outlets have since reported nationally on the crisis, which was barely mentioned before the video’s release on Monday.
A report by The Guardian newspaper stated:
“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.
His forces are believed to have slaughtered tens of thousands of people and are known for hacking the lips off their victims. Kony has been wanted by the international criminal court since 2005 on charges that include crimes against humanity. He has been living in the bush outside Uganda since that time.
The US designated the LRA a terrorist group after September 11, and in 2008 began actively supporting the Ugandan military. In October, the president deployed 100 combat-equipped troops – mostly special operations forces – to Uganda to advise regional military units in capturing or killing Kony.”
As well as instant recognition for the creation of the propaganda that had such viral and phenomenonal success, the charity Invisible Children has also received some criticism for the way in which it approaches the American government and disregards the guilt of the African leaders for allowing such atrocities to take place.
The charity issued a statement, which further promoted their case saying they wanted to investigate further into the issues. The approach of the video was to gather views from Uganda to decipher the best way to go about campaigning on the issue, as well as increasing awareness of the situation currently occurring in Uganda.
Ugandan experts have criticised the video further for misleading millions of people about Joseph Kony and his path of distruction.
Michael Wilkerson, a Ugandan specialist journalist said:
“It would be great to get rid of Kony. He and his forces have left abductions and mass murder in their wake for over 20 years.
But let’s get two things straight:
1) Joseph Kony is not in Uganda and hasn’t been for six years;
2) The LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds, and while it is still causing immense suffering, it is unclear how millions of well-meaning but misinformed people are going to help deal with the more complicated reality.”
From watching the video myself, I can completely understand it’s exponential popularity. It’s emotional, sensationalist and upsetting at times. For it’s purpose, it entirely delivers, I mean, before this point it’s unlikely a man in the street would be able to identify Kony and the heinous crimes the war-lord committed. But now we can, and we know about the kidnaps, murderers and rapists. But as a call to political action, its message is flawed. Not only can it be seen as condescending and tactless, it promotes a full-on invasion from America without any reference to the collateral damage that occurs with any invasion of this nature.
So despite the films relatively controversial approach and well-meaning but not necessarily accurate message, it cannot be denied that for Invisible Children the campaign has been a major accomplishment. This time last week, Uganda had not been further from our lips and Joseph Kony a stranger in a foreign land. But now we are forming opinions, spreading the word, discussing ways we can assist and governments are meeting to find an answer, an answer to a question posed by a YouTube video. A YouTube video that was uploaded on Monday.
