I was in middle school when I first heard about the Kony 2012 campaign. I remember watching the video and feeling such strong emotions after it. The call to action, feeling enraged, like I needed to do something, and fast! I remember it being the primary topic of conversation at school and my friends and I talking about getting the action packs on their website.
After watching it again this week, over a decade later, I felt a bit let down. I guess hindsight is 20/20, but how did that elicit those emotions? Is it the fact that I’ve been desensitized to some content now that 1) I’m a little older or 2) I’ve been using social media much longer now? I also think that at the time, I was so vulnerable and gullible to everything I saw online. I don’t remember my exact emotions from back then, but I could imagine feeling a sense of pressure to do something, and if I didn’t post it on my Facebook wall, then I would be marked as immoral or looked at poorly. Those lame high school pressures to fit in, you know? Not to say I didn’t want to actually do something, I did. But there was also a social pressure to join in on it too.
It’s very interesting to watch again now because I think I’m much more skeptical of the world in general, largely in part because of what people do on the internet. I took this journalist, Jason Russell, at face value and believed everything he was saying. I think overall media literacy and sifting through the scammy stuff has improved across all generations when it comes to social media, but it is because of prior experiences of engagement and exploitation that got us here, like the Stop Kony 2012 campaign.
I also think another aspect that influenced me at the time was how simply Jason portrayed the issue. In a 14-year-old’s brain, the complexities of international foreign affairs were not on my radar, so to somehow feel like I could understand this and get engaged felt very empowering. It made me feel good about what I was doing, overlooking how much effort would be needed to make a lasting and impactful change. I was a slacktivist!
However, I don’t want to totally discredit the situation. I think Jason had a real and genuine drive to do good. He wanted to help these people and used emotions to get others engaged. That isn’t always a bad thing, and in fact, it can be the most powerful tool of a successful activist movement. But the direction taken, like not including local voices, calling for military action without considering local capacity building, and working for an organization that did not appropriately handle funds, ultimately led to the campaign’s demise and his psychotic break. I don’t think anyone here had bad intentions. I think the campaign got a ton of support that they didn’t know what to do with. They had an idea but hadn’t planned out the steps ahead of them.
We ended this week’s class discussion with the question: what are some ways to ethically capture attention on social media? I’ve thought about this a lot. I don’t think I have all the answers, but I do know it is possible. The ALS ice bucket challenge is a great example of how it can be done. It was fun, lighthearted, easy to get involved with, and bipartisan! However, ALS isn’t controversial. How do we ethically capture attention when it comes to really hard to talk about subjects? What about when it involves politics? When we aim to gather support for a cause that opposes another group’s values, it requires a different approach, and I think we should focus more on what not to do. We so often see people on social media villainize the other side, prioritize argument over solution, and push people further into their echo chambers. The better path, I think, is one that prioritizes understanding over winning and leaves room for compromise on both sides. Unfortunately, this is not typically what the algorithm favors so it would have to incorporate some of the elements used in the ice bucket challenge, like making it fun, low stakes, easy to share across both groups.