The Uncultured

Last Wednesday, 7th March 2012, “Kony 2012” was the most searched for term on Google, and it was virtually impossible for anyone with an online presence to ignore the massive viral campaign by Invisible Children. It’s now Wednesday, 14th of March 2012, and I’ve barely seen a mention of it in the past few days, despite countless news articles and television spots in the mass media.

Google Insights confirms this- here’s the chart for the most popular “Kony” search term, “Kony 2012” over the past 30 days. The data is normalised, so the following numbers are relative to the total number of searches done on Google. As you can see pretty obviously, the peak is at March 7, a perfect score of 100, dropping 6 points to March 8, then drastically falling to 55 and 30 over the next two days. The last available data point is 13.

Almost identical graphs were observed for variations on the “Kony 2012” phrase, but this data means nothing if we cannot interpret it, and I think there’s a few possible explanations:

1. We don’t care about Kony anymore. Simply, the internet has moved on in a mere 48 hours, and the consciption of thirty thousand odd child soldiers and God only knows how many murders have passed the scope of  interest on the internet.
2. We’ve been disillusioned by the counter campaign. The backlash to Kony 2012 was pretty strong, and there were countless Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter posts dedicated to the cause of broadcasting controversy and exposing half-truths surrounding Invisible Children’s campaign. Perhaps the weight of evidence against the campaign convinced us that it was no longer worthy of our time our attention.
3. We’re embarrassed to continue the campaign. The previously mentioned counter-campaign was strong, and accusations of naïvety and slactivism came thick and fast from the anti-Kony campaign. To continue support of Kony 2012 is to open ourselves up to scorn and derision from our much more “enlightened” friends, basically the anti-goal of everything on the entire internet.

I tried to find some kind of other search term using Google, Google Trends and Google Insights that could work as a anti-term or antitheis to “Kony 2012”; some kind of phrase that was searched a lot for between the 7th and 9th that could add validity to the second hypothesis. “Kony 2012 Scam”, “Invisible Children Scam” and even a search for “Visible Children”, the anti-Tumblr account that claimed it was blocked by Facebook, turned up little search volume data. Despite several variations on this term, and flicking through Google Suggestions, nothing returned more than a score of “1” on Google Insights. Of course, this isn’t to say that hypothesis 2 has been disproved. For example, there wasn’t a clear branding to the anti-campaign such as the iconic “Kony 2012” that was easily recalled and searched for by those seeking alternative sources. There’s a distinct possibility as well that a wholesale disillusionment took place entirely through social networking; the retweeting and sharing of links, videos, tumblr posts and news articles was wide spread.

It is, of course, highly possible that we simply don’t care about Kony anymore, and the half life of viral campaigns on the internet is now shorter than ever. Campaigns come and go, and this one may have ran its course already. The criticism of “Slacktivism” was prominent among detravtors to the campaign, and this may be further evidence that watching and sharing a 30 minute video does nothing to actually help the subjects of the campaign (Ugandan kids), despite the emotion invested while watching the video. Regardless of whether this suggestion is correct, expect to see renewed interest leading up to the “Cover The Night” events on April 20 as the media builds hype around the iminent wrapping of cities by KONY 2012 posters.

Personally I feel that the real explanation lies in a combination of all three hypotheses- it’s naïve to think that just one could ever explain the sudden relative silence from the 95 million viewers of the campaign (and that number from YouTube and Vimeo alone). For some, the campaign has passed its internet vogue, for others, they believe it is no longer relevant after examining the counter message, and for others, it’s almost taboo to mention. I still think its enormously importent to bring Kony to justice, though perhaps not by the direct military intervention advocated by Invisible Children, or through donting your money to them. To suggest this though, is to invite critics, mockers and general internet shitstorm unto your opinion.

I think the scariest and most exciting possibility though is a fourth explanation. Similarly to above, this by no means explains the entire drop in attention to the campaign, but it may very well explain a large chunk. 

4. We simply don’t know where to go from here.

Joseph Kony is now famous amongst the Western world, leaping from YouTube, to Facebook, to newspapers and even mainstream television. Well done, Invisible Children, objective acheived, awareness has been generated on a massive scale.

What do we do with it though? Tyrants, warlords and general criminals are nothing new, and anyone with an internet connection and an enlarged social conscience has the ability to generate some kind of awareness beyond themselves of the issues surrounding any chosen despot. The goal of Invisible Children has been achieved, but there is now little instruction given to those invested in the campaign, emotionally, financially or otherwise besides “Purchase a T shirt and put up some posters!”, which is effectively reinforcing the message of awareness. 

Quite simply, where do we, as a global village, go from here?

I’d love to know your thoughts on your personal experience with the Kony 2012 campaign and any thoughts you have on my hypotheses stated above. Did these describe you at all? Have I got it completely wrong? Please, let me know.

inothernews:

Thank you.

Last week I got home at 4am, sober (before you start assuming things), and read all the way through to 6:30am.

No matter what’s going on, or what I’ve done, or what other people are doing, I can just lay down and escape, regardless of how bad I feel. I’ve missed reading novels.

Just this afternoon I was listening to John Safran, the often polarising and irreverent cultural commentator, on JJJ, who mentioned that he hasn’t watched the Kony 2012 video yet. He feels as if he missed the original wave of retweeting and support, and that we’re now in the cynical backlash stage. Now he comments that he feels unable to join in the conversation in a relevant manner, as he is simply too far behind the evolution of the campaign. It’s fascinating that in only about 48 hours, the trend of support has swung completely around, and I now see my Facebook full of cynical one liners and scathing memes, like the infamous image macro of Leonard Stone’s Willy Wonka; “You retweet and post on FB about KONY 2012? Tell me more about how you’ve always cared about the Ugandan kids”.

As I see it, this cynicism falls into 3 categories:

1. The Hipsters of Social Conscience: “This has been going on for years now,” they exclaim, “Why should you all care about it now? You don’t really care, and you’ll soon forget this as soon as the next campaign comes along”

2. The Informed Critics: “You’re really going to support this?” they ask incredulously, “Do you know what Invisible Children really support? Direct military action and only a third of the money donated actyally going to the cause? Invisible Children should just give the kids guns themselves. Kony himself hasn’t even been in Uganda for years, and the terror of the LRA is practically over.”

3. The Nihilist Anti-Slacktivists: “So what?” they say, “You’re clicking a few buttons and taking 30 minutes out of your day to watch an emotionally loaded appeal. It doesn’t matter what you do, because you don’t have any power to change anything by what you do on Facebook.”

Like I’ve said in my previous post on this issue, cynicism and criticism are, on the whole, good. It creates continued and renewed interest in an idea or campaign that realistically has an ultra-short shelf life on the fluid, breakneck pace of the internet and its enormous capacity for content creation. It also challenges thinking, refining ideas and creating new ones that stand stronger against criticism, with better, more informed and nuanced arguments. The fact that more people are now informed of the spending habits of Invisible Children and the more recent movements of the LRA is very good, because the more we know about the facets of an issue like this, the better placed we are to do something about it. The traditional paternal, Western arrogance of solving other countries problems as simply as possible can only be countered by a populace that is well informed on an issue and this is one of the instances that makes me love the internet. 

Unlike conventional news outlets, which have, on the whole, shifted toward a soundbite culture, collating the news into easy-to-digest, one dimensional nuggets, the internet offers alternative, citizen journalism. Sources are endlessly available to anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection, and as a result, via dissemination through social media, we have a Facebook population that is

a) becoming aware of the issue of the general idea of Joseph Kony and the LRA, through Invisible Children’s video.
b) becoming increasingly aware of the conflicting interests, cultural nuance and historical context surrounding Joseph Kony and the LRA, through critical response and reception to the original video.

So what then?

Reflecting on the previous paragraph, I think it’s clear that the main point we should, as a society, take out of this campaign is that a horrible injustice has been done and, no matter how invasive or large or culturally relevant to Uganda the LRA is now, something needs to be done. There’s certainly a much longer expiration on the prosecution of rapists or murderers here in Australia or the rest of the world. Perhaps Invisible Children is not the best NGO to donate your money to if we want to bring these criminals to justice, but they’ve done a damn fine job of bringing it to the world’s attention. 

Kony 2012, the subsequent backlash and public discourse on Facebook and other social mediums have captured the world’s attention and imagination. Passions have been ignited and are sitting as potential energy, no matter how contrived we think they are- even if they’ve only been aware of the issue for 48 hours. This could be a world changing public response. We have the resources to be informed far beyond what IC has included in the Kony 2012 video, and we have the capacity to demand a far more considered and appropriate response than simply regurgitating the response of direct military internetion that IC advocates.

Where are we going to go from here? 

The brilliance of social media is that ideas like this are easily distributed, easily viewed and easy to share. Information is the currency of democracy, and the more people who are made aware of this problem, the more pressure there will be on the world powers that be to take decisive action, no matter how jaded your view of the public-government interaction matrix. Looking at the campaign however, the real benefit becomes more apparent in how the message has been so successfully disseminated.

Despite what I’m about to get into below, I don’t think there’s any question that the removal of Joseph Kony is a very worthy cause to be involved in. Personally I couldn’t care less how many of the people involved would actually go to Uganda or the Congo or the Sudan to be on the front line fighting Kony. It’s the fact that they’re now aware of the problem and are outraged makes it a worthy pursuit to spread this idea- awareness is the beginning of change. If we have enough people aware, the law of averages says we’ll start to get more and more people actually willing to do more than click a few buttons. 

It’s ineveitable though that there’ll be cynics, both on the internet and real life, whether those who feel obligated to announce their previous awareness of the problem, or their disdain about internet “slacktivism”. In reality there’s a whole lot of valid points, generally because secondary research has been conducted. Yes, Invisible Children are using an emotional appeal that lacks historical context or detail, and yeah, the LRA aren’t as relevant now as they were a few years ago, now they’ve been effectively pushed from Uganda. It’s not a one dimensional problem, even though it seems so morally black and white- anyone with even a semester’s worth of tertiary education in history or humanities will be able to describe just how nuanceed all wars and conflicts are. Discussion is good; it creates ideas and refines old ones, strengthening arguments and expanding knowledge, especially on a collaborative medium such as the internet.

As I see it, this campaign means much more than just Joseph Kony, the LRA or Invisible Children. This is showing us the potential of the internet to really spread an idea and create change, even if the idea is a little contrived (though no one is arguing against leaving Kony to keep doing his thing). Someone in the Invisible Children marketing team has stumbled onto a great Big Idea, and we’re seeing it snowball and we’re seeing people start to get passionate. The idea of Kony is not so important now, rather, it’s the way in which the human social conscience is activated via the internet and social media. This is more than changing profile pictures “for breast cancer”, or updating statuses “to remember fallen soldiers”- major media coverage is exploding, and people are talking about this in real life. The pressure will start to build. Going directly to your government is probably a better idea than going to donate more money to Invisible Children though- here’s some reasons why and some other reasons why.

We’ve already seen the power of Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube in the Arab Spring/uprising, and now this could be the first major campaign to gain serious traction in world politics, all starting on Facebook, Vimeo and Youtube. It’s early days yet, but if this campaign really is successful in removing Kony, by force or otherwise, the real question is “How can we replicate and improve this public reaction?”. There’s no shortage of worthy causes to pursue, either in your own home country or abroad- Joseph Kony has just been lucky enough to be the target of the campaign that’s really working properly.

I think in even ten years we’ll look back on 2012 and realise just how little we utilised the power of the internet and social media for any real social benefit. This is a well directed, purposeful and well executed campaign, with the potential to change lives. Why wouldn’t you want to at least click a few buttons to help the cause- if not for Kony, for the wider idea that the internet has the power to actually change things on a global social scale? I’m genuinely excited to see how this pans out over the next few weeks.