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The Kony 2012 Movement

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Despite the eventual fall of the public sphere, the Kony 2012 campaign was still effective in unleashing the ability of social media to legitimize authority by effectively using the public voice to create change. Kony 2012 caused a huge reemergence of Habermas’ public sphere. Kony 2012 was the first time that social media was used for activist purposes. With Facebook being the most heavily used medium to voice the campaign, it created a platform for public discourse to take place. However, through the failure of this campaign emerged a new way to facilitate the public sphere. Several campaigns that took place after Kony 2012 exemplify the reemergence of the public sphere. Without the fall of the Kony 2012 movement, the emergence of other campaigns …show more content…

(Habermas, 1989) Kony 2012 was able to re-create social order through instrumental reasoning. To begin, the public sphere emerged as a body that questioned ‘slacktivism’ and conspicuous consumption. The issue with Kony 2012 was that Invisible Children oversimplified the issue, making it seem as though a simple pledge for support, donation, tweet/share of the video would make the main difference in the cause. In reality however this is not activism, it is what is known as ‘slacktivism.’ This term in essence means that people feel as though they are being active, as they gain the feeling of helping but the actions may not carry out any weight. Conspicuous consumption is the purposeful use of charitable donations in order to enhance social status or appear to be a good person, while also claiming oneself socio-economically superior. (really not sure what to cite, don’t know where we got this info :’)) The Kony Action Kits, priced at $30, were a great way for conspicuous consumption to take root. People would sport their Kony 2012 merchandise while doing nothing else to help the issue, which gave off the illusion of charity. Once the public became more critical of Kony 2012, and the relevant activist activities, the conspicuous consumption of donating to Invisible Children became apparent. The rejection of money …show more content…

One of her big criticisms of the public sphere was that it was not inclusive. Which means that the public sphere was not open to just anyone, it excluded women, children, and those less wealthy. The public sphere became a place where the bourgeois where left out. This excluded the voices of the minority and gave rise to wealthy men in power to speak about current issues and form opinions for the larger community. Kony 2012 reached out to millions of people, however lacked to reach the Ugandan population. Kony 2012 was unable for the most part to even reach the people of Uganda to cause any kind of real solution. This in tern left their voices unheard, when there was a great need for authentic Ugandan voice. (Jacobs, 2013) Nancy Fraser suggested that one look for existing public spheres rather than imposing new ones. (Fraser, 1990) Causing the already formed spheres to grow, and develop to become something exclusive to most people. With Kony 2012 this public sphere was newly created and failed to meet the standards that Fraser had referred too. By not recognizing speech from Ugandans the public sphere was unable to bring forth a stable opinion about the

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n today’s society the internet plays a huge role in the everyday lives of many people, therefore many individuals’ main form of communication is over sites like Facebook, and twitter. In Malcolm Gladwell’s essay, “Small Change, Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted,” he explores the different methods used by activists nowadays versus those used by the activists in the 1960s. Gladwell argues that social media is not an effective tool to initiate revolutionary movements or any change at all for that matter, based off its weak ties formed over different social networks. Gladwell illustrates multiple cases of protests and adds that without the assistance of social media, these protests were stronger, prearranged and based off deeper emotional ties. Throughout the article Gladwell continuously returns to the Civil rights movement and why it was effective.

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Jason Russell is the co-founder of the organization ‘’invisible children’’, which is aimed towards stopping Joseph Kony, the worst criminal on the world. Kony abducts children and turns boys into soldiers, while the girls into sexual slaves. Jason wanted to let the world know about this problem, so he made a video called ‘’Kony 2012’’. The video lasts for 30 minutes and throughout these minutes, Jason manages to use abundant amount of appeals and fallacies. The reason being, he wants to inspire millions of people to get involved in his campaign and stop Kony.

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At the start of this unit, I thought I was going to be against the Kony 2012 social media campaign and that it was not effective, mostly because I had not heard of it before. I began going through the course materials with the readings and they did not give me much of a reason to before it due to them discussing how bad the issue of child soldiers is around the world. To elaborate, one of the readings stated that in the media, “rarely do descriptive accounts of child soldiers adequately explain how they undergo fundamental changes in their identities and actions, from lives of relatively tranquility to the perpetration of wanton destruction and violence, often on defenceless civilians” (Denov & Maclure, 2007, p. 244-245). These descriptive accounts that are on the rare chance even

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Veblen calls such types of consumption ‘conspicuous consumption’ and ‘conspicuous leisure’. A thorough summary of Veblen’s fourth chapter ‘Conspicuous Consumption’ will first be given. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines ‘conspicuous consumption’ as a “…the practice by consumers of using goods of a higher quality or in greater quantity than might be considered necessary in practical terms” (Phillips, 2014). The aim of such a practice is to advance, establish or maintain one’s reputation in order to achieve a higher social status or prove that you belong in one.

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Introduction There is great contention regarding the impact of social media on political activism in Canada. While social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter offer users new opportunities to communicate, share, and disseminate memes and ideas, they also promote or facilitate the movement into streets for protests or other forms of activity. The arguments against social media generally revolve around its disposition towards remaining sedentary, behind the screen of a laptop or smart phone, writing short messages for the opposition to witness instead of actually making a physical presence in the real world. Alternatively, those who regularly engage in social media activism argue that they are raising awareness for their cause, which is theoretically true if one is to consider the sudden surge in discussion about specific topics.

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Prior to the creation of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr , communicating an idea to large numbers of people was slow and limited. What options did exist were flawed: newspapers edit and monitor the editorials they choose to publish, and social mobilization requires phone calls and handwriting letters-- a time consuming and labor intensive task. Social Media replaces editorials with blog posts that cannot be censored, and Facebook groups with the time and location of protests, replace slow and expensive phone campaigns. Furthermore, the internet allows people around the world to discuss current events in real time.

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In accordance with Singer’s argument, after buying the necessities needed to survive, the superfluous money should be contributed to charity, in view of the fact that charitable donations are a direct reflection of one’s values and perspectives. As John F Kennedy Jr. said, “it is easy for rich people just to write a check for charity; however, showing up and spending time with those in need was harder, but more important.” JFK’s statement shows how charitable donations are a direct reflection of ones values and perspectives by pronouncing the issue of just writing a check for exhibition to the public, it needs to come from deep in the heart and soul. Some say, if a person does not donate all unnecessary money to charity, does that reflect badly

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736 Words | 3 Pages

As the Kony 2012 video became popular, it took very little time for it to spread throughout nearly every social media site. However, it had very little effect in Uganda. This is because it is much easier to press a “like” button on YouTube or Facebook than to put in any real effort to solve a problem. “Slacktivism” is very prominent in today’s society, as nearly everyone has access to social networking sites and millions of people are “reblogging”, “liking”, and “sharing” something new every day. These sites are a great technological advance, however they may be manipulating today’s generation (CITE STUDENT

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In conclusion, political impact on social media is huge and obvious. Social media platforms is substituting the traditional formal news media which has restrictions on the news and information they share especially in closed societies. Governments of closed societies are facing a problem because the government cannot control the news and the information shared on the internet which diminish the government authority to control their citizens. Lack of control on internet has made social media a platform for activists in politics and human right

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