To increase the
awareness level of a message, advertisers and campaign managers know well about
the psychological effects of simplifying matters on people’s attention. Short
communications are persuasive and affect people’s readiness to engage in
different kind of actions. However, short communications have to simplify
complex topics an may lead to the problem of not taking into account the
entirety of a complex problem, for example by focusing only on a specific relationship
among many affected interest groups. To avoid a misleading reduction of complex
issues, I argue that the intention to increase the level of people’s awareness
by simplifying communications should be accompanied by a careful consideration
of the corresponding impacts in a more fine-grained stakeholder network. An insightful
example is the viral campaign KONY 2012, which entered the social media in early
March 2012.
The core of
the KONY 2012 campaign is a short film created by the non-profit organization
Invisible Children, Inc. The film documents the brutal abduction and cruel abuse
of children by Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to use them as
child soldiers in an ongoing conflict in northern Uganda. The LRA is a guerilla
group and its leader, Joseph Kony, was indicted for war crimes and crimes
against humanity by the International Criminal Court in 2005, but still has
evaded capture.
The KONY 2012
short film spread virally in the World Wide Web, mainly through social media
channels like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and Twitter. Within a month the clip had
been viewed more than 90 million times and the social media campaign raised a tremendous
awareness all over the world. Celebrities and politicians started to support
the concerns of Invisible Children, Inc. to bring Joseph Kony to justice.
However,
criticism about simplifying the complex conflict in northern Uganda arose
shortly after the film’s release. Invisible Children, Inc. was accused of
providing a black-and-white picture of the situation and of manipulating the
public opinion. For example, the film suggests that violence in northern Uganda
will come to an end and the abducted children will be able to return to their
families as soon as Joseph Kony would be captured. Of course, Kony is a
dangerous and cruel individual and bringing him to justice would be important.
But reducing the problems in northern Uganda to the faith of Joseph Kony is deceptive.
The history of the conflict is far more complex and includes many other
interest groups like, for example, the Ugandan army and government, of which
many seem highly suspicious too. Further, the film neglects the fact that most
LRA forces, including Joseph Kony, fled northern Uganda in 2006 to be dispersed
now across three neighboring countries.
As the example of KONY 2012 shows, awareness and
simplification have to be balanced so that creators of social media campaigns
are able to achieve their objectives and at the same time meet their
responsibility towards other stakeholder groups affected by complex problems. The
narrow spotlight on Joseph Kony led Invisible Children, Inc. to donate funds to
support military action for capturing the LRA leader. But what about the
rehabilitation and reintegration of former child soldiers as another affected
interest group?
