I\u2019ve found this phenomenon fascinating, and not solely because of its welcome spotlight on a continent-wide topic directly involving another young man I\u2019ve had the honor of knowing (for further reading on the subject, I recommend Ishmael Beah’s first-hand account of his experience as a child soldier in Sierra Leone).<\/p>\n
It feels like we’re approaching another inflection point, in which social media is elevating citizen activism to a level which obliges politicians to act.<\/p>\n
Like any larger-than-life movement, an inevitable backlash movement does not trail far behind. \u00a0In the West, the two camps seem to fall along generational lines. \u00a0In Uganda and much of the African diaspora, the video campaign feels more like Rudyard Kipling\u2019s condescending 19th<\/sup> century poem, \u201cThe White Man\u2019s Burden,\u201d\u00a0 and understandably so (for an excellent perspective on the nuanced issue, I recommend you start reading here<\/a>).<\/p>\n But even if iPad-touting youth in the West are re-tweeting video links and buying t-shirts so that they can feel better about themselves, you cannot condemn their intentions.\u00a0 \u00a0I’d much rather see virality on a complex, geopolitical topic like this than the traditional allocation of mindshare to the Kardashian sisters. \u00a0And Kony2012 does seem to be encouraging many people to research the complex topic more thoroughly.<\/p>\n Regardless of your opinion on the worthiness of the cause of hunting Joseph Kony, or on the agenda of the Invisible Children organization, one fact is undeniable: \u00a0the momentum generated by the Kony2012 campaign has forced politicians worldwide to take a position on a human rights issue that they likely would have ignored in a previous era.<\/p>\n I submit that we\u2019re only beginning to understand the approaching sea change of civic activism enabled by technology and the network effects of social media.<\/p>\n In addition to being the year of Joseph Kony, 2012 will also mark presidential elections among 3\/5ths<\/sup> of the UN Security Council permanent members: the U.S., Russia, and France. \u00a0In the first, President Barack Obama counts almost 13 million Twitter followers and boasts a whopping 91 for a Klout score.\u00a0 The second withnessed an unprecedented expression of public outcry, with grass roots solidarity largely enhanced by Facebook and Twitter during its election last week. \u00a0And here in France, politicians have underscored the power posed by social media in their curious zeal to censor it<\/a>.<\/p>\n We may not yet have reached the year in which digital activism tips an election, but the day is near for when it is the politician who is not necessarily the best-financed, but rather who best masters the power of social media that wins.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the 7-day span since last week\u2019s Rude VC column, the digital world has witnessed the fastest growing video campaign in the history of social media. I\u2019m of course referring to the Kony2012 short film produced by Invisible Children.\u00a0 The human rights organization launched a video with a sole objective to render famous and agitate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":10443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-finance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/markbivens.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/konychart.jpg\" "\\"konychart\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n