Assignment Two - Comment on LJ's Post

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.

Kony 2012 Second Text for Assignment 2

KONY 2012 on Vimeo

The video highlights how quickly people can be called to action using technology.  We have been asked what is old about new media – this video is a good illustration. A marketing teacher in my college posted it for our students and noted,

“I want you to see how he's presented it. Break it down: A well thought out storyboard containing the 5 'Why's' and the 'How', compelling images, quality writing and use of graphics. Stats are researched and presented in many ways to keep you glued to the set … Crude images such as a simple printed email with highlighted components, can become a bold message. His message is loud and clear in the way it is presented, and is a compelling call to action…When working with layouts for your marketing, advertising and social media material, take a look at all the great visual techniques he's incorporated to tell the story” (McLeod, 2012).

These techniques to tell a story have been around for ages but now almost anyone is able to put them to use and reach larger audiences than ever before.

This level of attention could not have been achieved by previous generations.  A television commercial might reach as many viewers but the cost would likely be out of the reach of an organization like Invisible Children.  I can choose to go back and view that video as often as I like, strengthening the message, and I can forward it to as many people as are in my network – and so can others. Neither of these are possible with television commercials.

Invisible Children accomplished its goal to make people aware of the situation.  That awareness is a part of its mission which states, 

“1) Make the world aware of the LRA. This includes making documentary films and touring them around the world so that they are seen for free by millions of people” (Invisible Children website, para. 4).

But some of the controversy that has followed the posting highlights another phenomena that is also not new.  Despite the fact I think as a public we are less naïve than perhaps a couple generations ago, we can still be swayed by a well-designed and communicated message.  The mainstream media has picked up the story and they provide a credible source of commentary on Kony 2012.

A columnist in the Winnipeg Free Press writes, “Congratulations Invisible Children, Joseph Kony is now famous. Mission accomplished. But now we are all aware, it's time to get informed.

The only thing more dangerous than not knowing anything is thinking you know everything” (Cook, 2012 para. 13-14).

Cook disputes the number of children that Invisible Children claims have been taken by Kony’s army; “Experts agree the involvement of children in the LRA has been vastly exaggerated. Studies show the prevalence of child soldiers in the LRA has been consistently over-reported” (2012, para. 7).

I don’t think the number of children is an issue here – the facts are known about this army and the world does not dispute the atrocities Kony has perpetrated.  For instance, Washington Post writer  Michael Gerson notes, “Even a diminished Kony is dangerous. And the evil of the man himself can scarcely be exaggerated. In Uganda, I’ve met former LRA child soldiers who were forced to kill their own parents and neighbors in order to sever their ties to community and sympathy” (2012, para. 7).

But Cook’s point is well taken – how many people investigated the validity behind the message before clicking “like” or replying. Today’s tools make it easy for anyone to develop and distribute a compelling message that is a complete falsehood.  In the wrong hands, this access seems scary to say the least.  How many people have sent money to hucksters due to Internet pleas?

Consider the radio message on Sunday, October 30, 1938 when “news alerts announced the arrival of Martians…Many ran out of their homes screaming while others packed up their cars and fled.  Though what the radio listeners heard was a portion of Orson Welles' adaptation of the well-known book, War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, many of the listeners believed what they heard on the radio was real” (Rosenburg, 2012, para 1).

The need for media literacy has only grown and is a part of the transliteracy we need to develop – to be literate, we need to develop a sense of how to judge and assess the messages that come our way. We need to be even more media savvy.

An article in Canadian Living features an interview with Debbie Gordon, managing editor at Mediacs.ca, a website that features media literacy workshops.  Referring to the so-called wardrobe malfunction of Janet Jackson’s at the Superbowl which created a furor among parents who were upset that their children saw it, she said,  "Media savvy kids were able to see the media toolbox hard at work during that halftime show - they weren't buying that message"(Desjardine, 2012, para 4).

Such media savvy training is essential so that the ‘smart’ mobs that are created with such messages on the Internet are indeed smart.

Cook, P. (2012).  Maybe invisible children aren’t there, Winnipeg Free Press, March 10, 2012. Retrieved March 10, 2012 from http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/%20opinion/westview/maybe-invisible-children-arent-there-142188783.html

Desjardine, E. (2012) Making kids media savvy. Canadian Living, retrieved March 10, 2012 from http://www.canadianliving.com/moms/parenting/making_kids_media_ savvy.php

Gerson, M. (2012). The controversy over Kony 2012. Washington Post, March 3, 2012. Retrieved March 10, 2012 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/the-controversy-over-kony-2012/2012/03/10/%20gIQAzc6M3%20R_%20blog.html

Invisible Children (2012). From Critiques Page,  http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.%20invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html Retrieved March 10, 2012.

McLeod, C. (2012).  Video gone viral: Kony 2012. Linked-In IMC Group. Retrieved March 10, 2012.

Rosenberg, J. (2012).  War of the worlds radio broadcast causes panic. About.com 20^th Century History. Retrieved March 10, 2012 http://history1900s.about.com/od/ 1930s/a/warofworlds.htm

Kony 2012, 597, Lippmann, etc

One of the exhibits I am going to look at for Assignment 2 is the smart mob at work in the movement, called Kony 2012,  that is blazing through the younger set.  (One of the side benefits of this course is how much more I have to talk to my teenaged sons about!) And I wanted to share it myself and start to think out loud about it.

For those who don't know, Joseph Kony is, as a leader of a guerrilla army in Uganda, infamous and notorious for alleged crimes against humanity. But he is not yet famous. And that's what Kony 2012 aims to change. 

Using some of social media best practices, the group has styled its tactics after of a U.S. political campaign's, as it marches toward an April 20th day of international action. If you've got 30 minutes, watch the video! 

Writing in 1921 in Public Opinion, journalist and scholar Walter Lippmann could see the changing contours of the world of communication, even though smart mobs and collective intelligence were phenomena of the future. He tells us world wide press services, photography and moving pictures are "key inventions...for bringing the unseen world into the field of judgment" (177).

I am out of my depth on this  (and haven't finished the book, and am not convinced Lippmann would have been among the utopians of our age)  but this is a crucial development because it attacks an ancient assumption that Lippmann calls "of the utmost consequence." 

And that is that men could give little attention to public questions, and that the attention available would have to be confined to matters close at hand. 

"For the possibility of bringing any aspect of human affairs within the range of judgment breaks the spell which has lain upon political ideas," he writes. 

I sense that there are some tentative conclusions to reach looking at Kony 2012 with the help of Walter Lippmann. 

It took about a day to get the video 1.8 million views on YouTube, so something is happening. And about to happen.

Sources:

Lippmann, W. (2010). Public opinion. BN Publishing.