Senate Kony 2012

Kony 2012 is a new social media movement that is striving to increase awareness of one of the worst war criminals in the world. The campaign urges viewers to donate and spread the word through social media, posters, demonstrations, and etc.

Joseph Kony, the namesake of the movement, is an African warlord that enslaves and abuses children, forcing them to fight one another and kill their parents. He has been indicted by war crimes by the ICC, but resources have not been mobilized to ensure his capture. The Kony 2012 movement seeks to change this.

For those who haven't seen the (29 minute) video yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

My questions to you are:

Does the Kony 2012 movement have a good chance at success, or will it falter due to any number of factors?

Social media has been playing an increasingly large role in political opinions and discourse, including most famously in the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. Do the social media driven movements have the opportunity to be as successful as more traditional forms of organization and action, or are they producing nothing more than temporary fads and a numerically impressive "hivemind" that simply "re-tweets" the message and does little to produce the desired change?

Will Kony's capture even change the quality of life for Africans in the regions that he has touched? Is Kony the cause of the problems, or a symptom of an underlying disease in African culture/Human nature? Will his capture just allow another bloodthirsty and ruthless criminal to assume power or will it be the start of a change in the political climate of the continent (and possibly the world?)

I'll answer a bit later, just wanted to get this topic on the forums to see what you guys thought about it!

 

Kony 2012 is late to the party.

President Obama sends Special Forces to Uganda



Special Forces mission in Uganda widened to Southern Sudan, Central African Republic, and Democratic Republic Of The Congo

 

Thought you'd be cheering, DB.

I don't think we can predict if this will be successful in any way, yet. But I find the idea that social media can mobilize a lynch mob more worrying than uplifting.

 

Well, normally I'd give at least a bit of a cheer. But when the President has already made an incredibly ballsy and politically courageous move in exactly the right direction, who cares about a bunch of Fb "likes"? I suppose it shows the more backwards elements of Congress that attempting to make US soldiers in Africa a political issue would be a bad move, but beyond that it's vapor, IMO. It's like if residents of Missouri started protesting the lack of government reaction to Japanese aggression in May 1943

 

Apparently the organization behind this movement is taking credit for the "advisers" being sent to Africa. At least, that is the impression that i got from 18:40-21:00 in the video.

And it is early, but if you get it right you are prescient! It is interesting that social media can do things like this, can make people care about things that they previously couldn't care less about. The response videos are the most enlightening to me. Mostly a bunch of people parroting whatever they saw in the video (Kony is evil! He kills children!) I guess that was the purpose of the movement, but it is kind of disheartening. We could have a whole thread on how horrible social media is.

These types of movements have been fairly short lived in the past, and the internet has created a disposable culture/news cycle. Not to mention, "bandwagon" supporters of these movements are generally pretty short on attention span. It will fizzle out in less than four months. Either that or we randomly engage in a larger scale effort to take down this guy, which is not only a slippery slope but also an incredibly pointless thing to do. I do support what Obama has done on the issue so far though I don't want our next war to be another silly man hunt...I'd be down with our next war never happening though, so what do I know.

 

The last season of 24 was devoted to highlighting this horrible use of children as soldiers. It is despicable and needs to be stopped. I support Obama in his decision to finally do something.

Don't know about the short attention span, but four months should be long enough to get more people aware of this. The problem is that most people will simply not believe it, because they can't believe that people can be this evil or cruel.

 

The number of people killed, kidnapped and brutalized by this creep is very high...

 

I agree with this. The privatization of what was once nation-state military action to private individuals concerns me.

Of course KONY 2012 doesn't advocate military force but how else are you going to apprehend Kony?

These should be multi-nation actions strictly.

 

[image=https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-SGmTUTqqGyw/T1lXbhsYQ7I/AAAAAAAAOx4/PqL2Netrz4E/kony2012-1.jpg]

 

I chortled.