voice via new media.
Chapter 7 pulls together many insights about participatory politics from across the book, exploring what these case study groups share and how they differ. We revisit some core concepts established in this opening chapter, including participatory politics, transmedia mobilization, and the civic imagination. We start the chapter with a story that illustrates the ambivalence many young people feel about being activists, their uncertain position somewhere between participatory culture and institutional politics, and the messages they have internalized from adult commentators that their characteristic forms of political action don’t count. We end the chapter with another story—this one illuminating the generational divide between historic civil rights leaders and their contemporary counterparts—and some criteria by which we might determine which forms of participatory politics are effective, for whom, and toward what ends.
An Afterword, contributed by Lissa Soep from Youth Radio—a national youth-driven production company based in Oakland, California—returns us to this chapter’s discussion of connected learning. Soep also compares and contrasts the core case studies, outlining which theories of learning might help us to understand how these groups are recruiting and empowering American youth as civic and political agents. Her observations here are primarily aimed at educators, but understanding the underlying pedagogical assumptions shaping these organizations is key to understanding the role they play in the lives of American youth.
Beyond this, we have also developed digital resources you can use to learn more about participatory politics. Check out our By Any Media Necessary website at byanymedia.org. This site assembles an archive of activist videos, including those described in the book and those produced by a range of other networks and organizations, which sample the range of genres and rhetorical practices through which today’s young citizens promote their causes. This archive also includes videos produced for the project by Participant Media and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s HitRecord project, which we hope will generate discussions in classes and within civic organizations around digital citizenship. We also include lesson plans for exemplary workshops to help students better understand the core principles and practices of participatory politics. Educators from the National Writing Project and the National Association for Media Literacy Education have been working with us to share and test this site and its materials in the classroom. We hope this resource provides readers, especially educators but also activists, a chance to extend this book’s analysis to explore a broader array of contemporary political and civic practices.
2
“Watch 30 Minute Video on Internet, Become Social Activist”?
Kony 2012, Invisible Children, and the Paradoxes of Participatory Politics
Sangita Shresthova
Right now, there are more people on Facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago. Humanity’s greatest desire is to belong and connect. And now we see each other. We hear each other. We share what we love and it reminds us of what we all have in common. And this connection is changing the way the world works. Governments are trying to keep up. The older generations are concerned. The game has new rules.
—Kony 2012
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In spring 2012, Invisible Children (IC), a San Diego–based human rights organization, released Kony 2012, a 30-minute video about child soldiering in Uganda. In a central feature of the film, Jason Russell, one of the group’s founders and longtime leaders, speaks as a father to his young son about the evils perpetrated by the warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The film ends with a call for supporters to help circulate the video in order to make Kony “famous,” criticizing the lack of Western media coverage of his atrocities and demanding that the U.S. government take action to end his reign of terror. IC anticipated that the well-crafted video might reach half a million viewers by the end of the year, based on its extensive experience deploying online videos. Instead, Kony 2012 spread to more than 70 million viewers over the first four days of its release and over 100 million during its first week in March 2012. By comparison, Modern Family, then the highest rated non-sports and non-reality program on U.S. television, was attracting a
little over 7 million average weekly viewers (based on published Nielsen ratings), and The Hunger Games, the Hollywood blockbuster released on March 23 of that year, drew an audience of approximately 15–19 million during its first weekend (based on ticket sales reported by boxofficemojo.com). Inspired by the video’s celebration of the power of social media, IC’s young supporters demonstrated how grassroots networks might shift the national agenda.
The speed and scope of the pushback against Kony 2012 was almost as dramatic as its initial spread. IC and its supporters were ill prepared for the video’s movement from a relatively tight-knit network of people who knew about the organization and its mission to a much larger population learning about Kony for the first time as someone they knew posted the video on Facebook, forwarded it by email, or blasted it via Twitter. Kony 2012 drew sharp criticism from many established human rights groups and Africa experts, who questioned everything from IC’s finances to what they characterized as its “white man’s burden” rhetoric. IC was especially challenged for being out of sync with current Ugandan realities and promoting responses some argued might do more harm than good. Critics saw Kony 2012 as illustrating institutional filters and ideological blinders that have long shaped communication between the global North and South.
Kony 2012 became emblematic of a larger debate concerning attention-driven activism. In a blog post written in Kony 2012’s immediate aftermath, Ethan Zuckerman (2012a) surveys the critiques leveled against the video, stressing that it gained broad and rapid circulation by grossly oversimplifying the complexities of the conditions in Africa and creating heroic roles for Western activists while denying the agency of Africans working to change their own circumstances. Zuckerman explained: “I’m starting to wonder if this [exemplifies] a fundamental limit to attention-based advocacy. If we need simple narratives so people can amplify and spread them, are we forced to engage only with the simplest of problems? Or to propose only the simplest of solutions?” This question haunts not only IC supporters, but leaders of many other activist groups.
By the time Kony 2012 hit, our team at USC had been studying Invisible Children for three years. We first learned about IC through one of its early, and still controversial, media artifacts, a short dance film entitled Invisible Children Musical (2006), which was a takeoff of Disney’s High School Musical. In this film, IC’s founders turned to popular culture, song, and dance to reach and inspire young people to take part in the Global Night Commute, a multisited live event. The Invisible Children Musical polarized our research group when we watched it during our weekly meeting. Some members were intrigued, even excited, by its unabashed appropriation of popular culture. Others literally pushed themselves away from the conference table to express their negative reaction to the film’s extravagantly celebratory and admittedly simplistic messaging.
As we learned more about the organization’s media and activities, we quickly understood that pushing the boundaries of youth activism was an integral, though not always completely intentional, part of IC’s efforts. Through a series of research projects focused on various facets of IC—including learning, transmedia storytelling, and performativity—we delved deeper into understanding the group’s media, staff, and supporters. Over the years, we observed many IC events in Southern California. We attended film screenings and watched many hours of IC media. We were invited to attend events that the group organized and visited its headquarters in San Diego many times. We interviewed 45 young people involved with IC and had regular interactions with the group’s leadership.
Our ongoing contact
