While I have sympathy with the position of Uganda that the
narrative arc doesn’t encompass the full story of Uganda or Africa and that
problems are oversimplified, I am impatient as well. Kony is real. He is still
out there. He is a war criminal wanted by the international community. And if it’s just about white (literally)
knights, what about the need for aid for victims of the current drought in
Africa?
These arguments smack of the impatience expressed by the
elite that the Occupy Movement was disorganized and lacked focus; they, too,
missed (or dismissed) the point that many people were motivated to use
themselves to express their impatience with a society that they saw as ignoring
what they would consider to be the real issues of the day – injustice,
pollution and corporate greed.
Stopping Kony is the right thing to do, as Matt Gurney says
on Q. Teddy Ruge asks an important question about advocacy in a Web 2.0 world:
Are we looking at the people we are purporting to support our partners in this
mission or are we looking at them as victims and (my words) the ‘little
people’.
The Three Little Pigs advert is a thoughtful example of how
modern media typecasts in its commentary. The pigs go from being victims to
being perpetrators as everyone tries to figure out the story.
Last week Kim Denstedt posted about Kony2012 as well, and I
made this comment:
“Kony2012 is indeed an interesting
example of smart mobs and your question of how smart they are is a great one.
The ease of affiliating in a Web 2.0 world is tempered by the concomitant ease
of researching the validity of claims being made by an organization like
Invisible Children. We can go to the organization's website and check out their
audited statements. We can go to the International Court's website and read the
source material for ourselves and I did both those things.
Add to that the increasingly
networked and multicultural nature of our world; for me, the video played out
against a backdrop of knowledge about child soldiers who have immigrated to
Winnipeg, where my sister got to know them. The world we live in, with its diversity
of experiences and ease of access to information, makes us both more skeptical
and more readily moved to action and affiliation.”
Using Langman’s analysis, I would say that my meditations on
Kony2012 are framed by the four factors provided: the information, my
receptiveness, the ability to watch and reflect on the information and links to
others with similar views and concerns. Just as importantly, they are informed
by my own transliteracy and ability to access the different media – video, Google,
print, podcast. Without those skills, I would not be able to manage my access
and education on the issue.
Judith - you make a great point that we have the access today to check the background of anything posted, unlike just a few years ago where we may have been more inclined to believe it if it was in print. I trust that our schools are teaching our students those online research skills and how to judge the credibility of what they read online. I know that (sgain showing my age) that I am slower to think about going online to look into something than are the students I am teaching now. But I am learning.
ReplyDeleteLiz - I loved the three pigs story and have forwarded it to our journalism chair - the impact of citizen journalism on the professionals is clear. As the net to newsgather expands, so does the responsibility of the investigative journalist to get the facts.