Abstract
On March 5, 2012, the advocacy organization Invisible Children released a short 30-minute film entitled Kony2012, on YouTube.com. Within days, the video had gone viral, gaining a mass global viewership. By December 2012, the video had received over 94 million views worldwide, attaining the unofficial status as “the most viral video of all time.” While Kony2012 raised awareness about the urgency of the manhunt for Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony and his exploitation of child soldiers in Uganda, the film generated much controversy. Commentators, both from within Uganda and beyond, raised serious questions about the oversimplified Colonial-style intervention (with its especial focus on military interven- tion) that the video seemed to promote. This article explores in-depth to what extent the Kony2012 phenomenon embodies both the material and discursive legacies of colonialism. It finds that, while fostering a digital citizenship that promotes the sharing of valuable information, such online advocacy may also unintentionally reproduce and rapidly disseminate ste- reotypes, bias, and racism. Thus, Kony2012 is a case study of the ways in which online media can be both productive and limiting in addressing hate and exploitation. While the Kony2012 campaign quickly and impressively raised popular awareness of child trafficking and exploitation, it nevertheless subtly marginalized the experiences and cultural perspectives of the Ugandan people and privileged a Western-centric interventionism.
Highlights
There are more people on Facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago
This article argues that while social media sharing has a tremendous potential to foster a digital citizenship that allows for valuable debate and expression, users must be especially conscious that the technology, as with any tool for communication, can replicate and restate colonialist scripts and other forms of dangerous, discriminatory discourse
The local population is depicted as too incompetent to represent themselves and the more able, more powerful, Western influence must speak and act for them. It is in this sense that the premise of the film reveals the issues at stake in a digital citizenship: it implies that there are those who lack the resources to use the Internet to its full potential themselves—often those who are the worst off in traditional global politics will remain “invisible”—and those who are best able to harness its power for the global good
Summary
There are more people on Facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago. Kony2012 assumed the most important tool of any advocate is knowledge, and that a powerful message could move an audience from viewing a problem, to solving it This article explores how an online advocacy campaign surrounding an at-large war criminal came to ignite such controversy, and in doing so, highlights both the potential and perils of a viral advocacy movement This discussion explores how the Internet can be used to promote social causes and galvanize large online communities (including ending hate) while at the same time may foster a “pornography of violence” in which a Western-centric audience may gaze into and appropriate the “developing world” as a site of titillation This article argues that while social media sharing has a tremendous potential to foster a digital citizenship that allows for valuable debate and expression, users must be especially conscious that the technology, as with any tool for communication, can replicate and restate colonialist scripts and other forms of dangerous, discriminatory discourse
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
