Kony 2012 - The New Virtual Media 'Hyper Sensation'

Kony 2012, the viral video directed by the Invisible Children Inc. co-founder Jason Russell, is getting a lot of attention nowadays, and thanks to social networking and video sharing sites, Joseph Kony, the leader of Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has become a reviled household name. The video showcases the plight of Ugandan children who flee for their lives from a seemingly unstoppable monster named Joseph Kony who steals them from their families to be used as sex slaves or child soldiers. The video implores people to speak up and take action so that the government will not pull the plug on what little support it has given to Uganda to resolve this problem. Time and time again the video puts the heart-wrenching face and story of Jacob Acaye, the star victim, on screen and then shows crowds of young white Americans protesting as a direct contrast, implying that others are taking action against atrocity, why not you?

As of March 19, 2012, the film had over 83 million views on YouTube, and over 16.6 million views on Vimeo. Numerous celebrities including Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian and Bill Gates have widely expressed their support for the Stop Kony movement. Here at NEIU, posters of the film, signifying the 'Stop Kony' movement has been placed all over NEIU main campus in an outpour of support.

This is a perfect example of our nation's uttermost and almost blind trust on the internet and its virtual social networking. Nowadays, in this age of instant connectivity through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, anybody with a camera can start a movement by making and uploading a video to any of above-mentioned sites. Social networks are proving to be more easily manipulated due to the strong reactions people have when exposed to the emotionally charged twisted-reality in videos and other media. People will simply believe what they see and join the cause without even considering doing a fact checking and questioning the authenticity of the video.

The Washington Post stated, "Kony is undeniably brutal, and the World Bank estimates that under his leadership, the LRA has abducted and forced around 66,000 children to fight with them during the past two decades." ForeignAffairs.com adds that, "in October 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he would be sending "combat-equipped troops to Uganda." Local journalists seemed woefully misinformed when Kony 2012 went viral. Once initial inquiries along the lines of "Who or what is the LRA?" and "What do they want?" were out the way, the next most common questions were "Why intervene now?" and "What is in it for the United States?"

The conclusion of the Kony 2012 video presents the fact that Obama sent 100 American military advisors to Uganda to locate and capture Kony with the assistance of the Ugandan Army. Using the most basic research, it becomes clear that this action was not a direct response to the Invisible Children campaign as it appeared to be in the video. ForeignAffairs.com pointed out that the military advisers may have been sent as a reward for Ugandan assistance in Somalia years earlier. Globalresearch.ca put another exciting spin on the tale of Kony 2012's claim, that advisers were sent in connection to the "discovery of the largest onshore oil reserves in the Lake Albert region of Uganda in July 2009," and, "coming at the exact same time as accusations that some of the highest officials in the Ugandan government were guilty of accepting bribes from international oil companies, only further confirmed that the deployment had less to do with Kony, an elusive figure who in fact left Uganda six years ago, and more to do with the securing of American oil interests."

Kony is possibly no longer residing in Uganda, a fact the video that made him famous mentions, and the narrator and director Jason Russell himself attempts to take credit for, saying that Kony is on run now that he knows he has become a household name. However, multiple sources, including Gen. Carter Ham, the head of U.S. Africa Command, say that Kony hasn't been in Uganda for the last six years.

Amama Mbabazi, the Ugandan prime minister, has launched an online response video which is available on YouTube, seeking to correct the "false impression" that Uganda is still in conflict. Mbabazi clearly said that he wanted to correct the "well intentioned" (Kony 2012) video, pointing out that "Joseph Kony is not in Uganda", and that the country is "not in conflict".

What Kony has done to the people of Africa is atrocious, and he should be brought to justice. But this is nothing new. Kony and LRA were destroying lives long before the video Kony 2012's release. I agree with an African blogger named Musa Okwonga, who blogged about the video on independent.co.uk, said that, "About ten minutes into the video, the narrator asks his young son who "the bad guy" in Uganda is; when his young son hesitates, he informs him that Joseph Kony is the bad guy. In a sense, he let Kony off lightly: he is a monster. But what the narrator also failed to do was mention to his son that when a bad guy like Kony is running riot for years on end, raping and slashing and seizing and shooting, then there is most likely another host of bad guys out there letting him get on with it. He probably should have told him that, too."