Kony 2012
Today, both mainstream media and alternative media have grown and are becoming more and more globally pervasive and visible (Coyer 1). One of the most recently striking mainstream media artifacts, in my opinion, is entitled “Kony 2012”. This thirty minute long film was directed by Jason Russell, an effective film director and activist. I found this video on YouTube and it was amazing to see how much viewers this film had. This film was recently released on March 5, 2012 and it has approximately ninety-two million viewers. Kony 2012 is relevant in today’s society because of global awareness and journalistic inaccuracy displayed through its production and political economy, text, and audience reception.
Kony 2012 was named after the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony. In Uganda, Kony goes around abducting children, separating them from their families. The purpose of kidnapping the boys is to train them into become child soldiers by shooting their parents. On the other hand, the girls were kidnapped to become sex slaves. The main message behind the film Kony 2012 was basically structured towards locating Joseph Kony so that he can be arrested. In order to go about finding Kony, numerous media tools where used to raise awareness of Kony, making him famous throughout the world (Peterson). There were numerous individuals who were involved in the successful campaigning of the Kony 2012 message. Some of these people include celebrities and politicians such as Rihanna, Oprah Winfrey, George Bush, Bill Gates, and also thousands of other American citizens who participated in posting posters and stickers and also wearing pins in support of finding Kony. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were three of the major social networking sites used to campaign the short film, Kony 2012 (Molloy).Each one of these tools helped in raising awareness by hindering public mobilization. The reason for this was because numerous individuals started working together,...
