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Examining the Viral Structure: The Rapid Rise and Dormancy of the KONY 2012 Meme
Terry, Christy
University of Texas at Dallas
EMAC 6372.001 – Approaches to Emerging Media and Communication: Viral Media Spring 2012
Kim Knight
May 10, 2012
Introduction
On March 5, 2012, non-profit organization Invisible Children, Incorporated released a short film via a plethora of internet avenues as a means to bring awareness to the barbaric measures taken by Ugandan war criminal, Joseph Kony.
The spread of the short film carried with it an intended goal of the arrest of Joseph Kony by the end of a ten-month period. In order to achieve this goal, the organization focused on acquiring the help of major celebrities whom they felt had a significant cultural foothold (such as George Clooney and Oprah) as well as the sale of promotional paraphernalia and the implementation of a mob-like event meant to create more awareness for their cause.
While all elements of the Kony 2012 campaign had the makings of a theoretical success, the actual results (which are not yet final) have been lackluster. The short film has been quite effective in its efforts to cause awareness, however, where KONY 2012 has succeeded in educating, it has lacked in creating explicitly definable terms that move the public to take any sort of action.
Due to the popularity of the viral media campaign in this day and age, the aforementioned issue is one that is witnessed all too often. A viral media object creates an interest due to the nature of content therein, leaving the viewer with heightened emotions and a desire (however fleeting) to act, yet the steps to take action aren’t defined clearly enough for the audience to do so. Or, as is to be believed in the case of KONY 2012, the audience is not quite clear as to how their actions (which include placing posters in different public areas) create enough difference to enable significant change.
This paper aims to dissect the strategies used by the Invisible Children, Inc. organization in relation to various theories of the viral structure as well as offer alternative methods and consideration that may help the campaign reach its ultimate goal.
The Difficulty of Measuring Participation in the Digital Age
The Birth of a New Popular Culture
One of the main reasons that social injustice viral media movements are so successful has to do with the emergence of the grand participatory culture that flourishes within the digital realm. Fleets of users band together because of their common interests and create an audience that obtains the power to create significant change.
However, this nouveau culture also brings with it the potential for a sector of its members to simply follow the crowd with nary a sincere interest in the actual action involved with supporting the corresponding cause. A lack of definitive terms creates an easy escape for the “tag-along” affiliates of participatory audiences whose attention was only garnered due to the merit they would achieve for being somewhat involved with the movement in the first place.
Author ZiZi Papacharissi discusses the notable shift in public interaction in A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites. One of the more precise points in his work notes that members of participatory culture tend to lack a distinct individual interest in supporting a certain movement; rather, their interest lies in being associated with the movements as a way to illustrate the philanthropic nature of their online personas. In short, there may not be an actual invested interest in a humanitarian effort, but to be completely inactive in said effort would result in a lack of popularity among your participatory culture peers due to their interest in the humanitarian effort.
The KONY 2012 campaign emerged on the heels of many other social movements that thrived due to the inclusion of social media networks and the viral action of the participatory culture (including the demise of the dictatorial rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt as well as Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia), therefore leaving it to be believed that the majority of its audience were not sincerely invested in the cause and were not willing to put forth the actual effort that would need to be exhibited in order to remove Joseph Kony from power.
This participatory audience that received KONY 2012’s message had witnessed the uproar that previous movements had caused and rather than be left out of the loop, chose to spread the word about the video associated with the cause but did little else to enforce the campaign’s demands.
An Easily Distracted Digital Society
Another element of the participatory culture that undoubtedly contributed to the lackluster active reception of the KONY 2012 campaign is its relatively short attention span. The emergence of a more digital society carries with it an increasing possibility for participants to be bombarded with a wealth of distractions. The rise of the viral media object has created a broad landscape of which members of the participatory culture are asked to wade through on a constant basis.
The moment a viral media object is created in an effort to start a path toward social change, another object creeps up from the crowd with points that appeal to the exact same audience, and perhaps in a better manner.
In Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements, author John D.H. Downing expresses this theory by noting that the short attention span of a movement’s intended audience lends it to be swept away with the arrival of the next big thing, so to speak. It is for this reason that it is imperative that when creating a viral media object in hopes of executing change in the physical realm, one pinpoints a target demographic and appeals to said demographic in a manner that is specific enough to sustain an audience for an effective amount of time.
It appears as though KONY 2012 lost its footing in this area due to its main focus of simply spreading the word while to whom and with what specific intent seemed to be looked over in favor of reaching as many as possible. As Downing points out, this approach to viral media leaves the audience with a lot left to be desired and easily susceptible to being inactive and seeking whichever movement is around the corner.
There are also those members of the would-be KONY 2012 participatory culture who are not being pulled away from social movements in favor of more current social movements, but in favor of a lighter subject matter. While technology can be used as a grand tool for dispersing pertinent information regarding social injustice, a blind eye mustn’t be turned to the fact that it is also used as form of entertainment. When users are met with an influx of social injustice-charged media coverage, more often than not, they have a stronger desire for using the internet as a form of escapism rather than a form of righting human wrongs.
Richard Grusin speaks to this in Premediation: Affect and Mediality after 9/11, where he describes the major media’s role in helping distraught Westerner’s cope with the harsh realities surrounding the security of the United States following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. During this time, the government, media and corporations formed an alliance to secure the American peace of mind through multiple campaigns (including the promotion of retail therapy and the redefinition of French fries).
That very coping mechanism has transferred into the digital realm. Only where there was once physical shopping and restaurant frequenting, there is now e-commerce and multiple entertainment blogs which help the participatory culture to deflect from happenings that may not be as peaceful as they would prefer.
Not only are positive distractions in the form of premediation a constant issue when trying to sustain a viral media audience, but negative distractions serve as ammunition that can deflate the impact of a viral social movement as well. Since its inception, the KONY 2012 campaign has been subjected to rumors of providing improper facts regarding Joseph Kony’s character as well as a wide range of criticism from the digital society for its lack of effective presentation. There was also a huge stain placed on the campaign due to the arrest of video director, Jason Russell.
Just as the media creates escapes from social viral structures for the public through premediation, so do they through emphasis on the negative aspects of said structure. All of these elements create an uncertainty within the participatory culture that eventually drives them to find other uses of their time and effort.
The Continued Decrease in Shock Value
It is also worth noting that the current popularity of the viral structure not only lends distractions in the form of multiple objects being issued at the same time, but it is also subject to a lack of actual effect due to the hypermediation that is inherent within a primarily digital culture.
Shocking imagery and audio are on constant loop within viral media culture, rendering each instance less effective than the last because of the participatory community’s familiarity with such strategies. Concepts that once moved an audience to act are no longer guaranteed to hold attention.
Therefore, it would have served KONY 2012 well to offer a lighter focus than that which was presented via the film and subsequent efforts. The general public is well aware of the character of dictators (even more so currently due to the influx of recent social movements that have been fueled through social networks and sites that promote content sharing), so using that as the main statement throughout the campaign left quite a bit to be desired. The question “What can I Do?” has not exactly been answered in an efficient manner.
Awareness vs. Action
It is this lack of a distinct call to action leads to what Howard Rheingold refers to as the “activation gap” (“Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement”, p.98). Rheingold credits the constant repetition of social viral media objects as being responsible for the decrease in the participatory culture’s desire to be cooperative on any other level than digital. The excitement for the cause doesn’t quite transfer to the physical realm; yet, the physical realm is where the change needs to manifest.
Rheingold also touches heavily on this subject matter in Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. He states that a social media object cannot be genuinely successful without a stance that ultimately provides motivation for its intended audience: “Something must motivate people to contribute to a public good.” (Chapter 2, Technologies of Cooperation, p.32). Due to the lack of specific intended audience, the KONY 2012 campaign fell victim to the lack of providing the participatory culture with enough motivation to move them to efficient action.
How can situations such as this be thwarted in the future? Henry Jenkins believes that the answer lies in the proper education. The swift public transition from the physical to the digital forced society to adapt quickly to the new culture, leaving many without any proper instruction on how to be an effective contributor to the participatory community.
In Confronting The Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media and Education in the 21st Century, Jenkins speaks to the counterfactual understanding that merely viewing a media an object is equivalent to effective action. Given the lack of definition involved with the campaign, KONY 2012 did not properly take this concept into consideration prior to its launch. Seeing as how the participatory culture is inherently confused about what participation means, it would have served the Invisible Children, Inc. to lead its audience to a more efficient way to contribute through a more specified message.
One potential idea that Jenkins references is that of a specific initiative created for the purposes of properly educating the members of participatory culture. This idea would certainly allow movements such as KONY 2012 to be more successful in their approach. When the participatory culture becomes properly educated, effective action can be taken even in the absence of proper information due to the fact that the culture will have a better understanding of what questions to ask. There will be a stronger possibility for the culture to have a greater interest in the cause rather than take a view-and-shrug position on issues that they aren’t well informed of.
The education initiative could also serve as a way for movements to weed out the previously mentioned “tag-a-long” sector. Effective activity could be logged and related viral media objects could be heavily tailored to a more specific demographic depending on the results.
Conclusion
Creating awareness and creating an urge to act are two very different concepts and while KONY 2012 excelled rather greatly at the former, it most certainly failed in the latter. The silver lining involved with this particular effort, however, is that due to the deadline that has been given for their demand, there is still time for the right approach to be taken.
In the upcoming months, it would serve the Invisible Children, Inc. well to restructure their campaign by settling on specific desires aimed at allowing the participatory culture to contribute in an effective manner. There should also be a plan drafted for the aftermath of the ousting of Joseph Kony should it actually occur, given that while Joseph Kony is a large part of the problem in Uganda, he is certainly not the only problem that exists. How will the members of his army and regime be dealt with in the aftermath of his exile? What steps will be taken to ensure the smooth transition of the nation to a more democratic society once the dust has settled? How will the Invisible Children, Inc. guarantee (of at all) that the people of Uganda will not be forgotten once the issue is no longer at the forefront of social media?
These are the areas that the Invisible Children, Inc. must mull over if they truly desire a successful outcome from the KONY 2012 campaign. Simply viewing past social movements involving viral media and taking a copycat approach without considering all of the elements involved will no longer due as more and more opportunities for using viral media as a tool for social change emerge. The familiarity of similar methods is bound to bore the participatory audience in due time and creators of viral structure will simply have to learn to look deeper to capture an audience that will render social justice.
Bibliography
used for various research regarding the Egyptian and Tunisian Revolution for comparison.
Papacharissi, Zizi.A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites
New York, NY: Routledge, 2011
Downing, John D.H. Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements
Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc., 2000
Grusin, Richard. Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9/11
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
Rheingold, Howard. “Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement”; Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth; (Online, December 3, 2007) 97-118
Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
Cambridge, MA : Perseus Publishing, 2002.
Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media and Education for the 21st Century
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009
Christy A. Terry