It was the buzz in my class tonight: “Have you seen the #StopKony campaign? It came out of nowhere!”
I, unfortunately, knew only that it was trending on Twitter. I’d not had time to poke around. And then danah boyd (@zephoria) came to my rescue:
A critique of the Kony 2012 film & the Invisible Children #stopkony campaign: http://bit.ly/wXyDAy (oversimplified msgs can do damage)
The tweet alludes to an effective, oversimplified and apparently misleading film: 81,000+ retweets of a 30 minute YouTube video.
A 30-minute video that doesn’t tell us that Joseph Kony left Uganda six years ago.
A 30-minute video that doesn’t tell us that the Lord’s Risistance Army (LRA) now numbers in the hundreds; there is no army of 30,000 mindless children.
A 30-minute video that doesn’t tell us that the real health issue in Uganda is something called “Nodding Disease” which has claimed more than 4,000 children.
It’s a brand awareness and money-making campaign by NGO Invisible Children (which funnels a large part of its revenue – see IRS 990 — to Invisible Children Limited in Africa).
One person can make a difference. Read more at Foreign Policy Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things.
As I say in any post like this one, if it sounds too good or too bad to be true, the odds are it isn’t! Do diligence – check before you retweet, forward or share!
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Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com