I respect what all of you are saying in terms of critique - but there is no way on earth he (the movie maker) would have been able to get people so excited and energetic in 30 minutes if he had cared only to be developmentally and logically and theoretically and politically correct. That doesn't resonate with youth who are too lost in their social media lives. They need quick, invigorating, actionable, triggered media on their face to feel provoked. I felt provoked. There is a reason why UN supported documentaries are not shared by every other teenager over 3 days on a viral social network - they struggle to be compelling, and are terrible story tellers. I highly doubt the folks at Invisible Children are not aware about the implications of their approach. They tried to tell a good story here - and they did an excellent job at it. And the fact that we are having these discussions on an important listserv is a blessing in disguise; we are learning more about policy implications of international peace efforts, than we would have ever cared to learn about had we not heard of Kony.

I am an entrepreneur myself, and know how when you sell stuff, even if it is a social product and if it's going to challenge the Solow model of growth, it doesn't matter: you got to put it in lay man terms (sometimes very embarrassing) and over simplify what you are doing and offering. And often end up taking a completely different politically incorrect (not wrong, though) approach to resonate with your audiences. None of our research evidence and learnings are ever useful to any partner or investor or customer. None of our proven theories on economic development are even looked at. The only people who question you about that are people at conferences and classrooms; we are living in bubbles, and if we cannot learn to communicate important and proven theoretical ideas in crisp and pervasive media, we will be left behind.


Varun

On 03/08/2012 08:04 PM, Abraham D. Flaxman wrote:
to make this critique a slogan, "Know Why 2012"

Sent from phone

----- Reply message -----
From: "Amer Dahmash" <adahmash@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Mar 8, 2012 4:27 pm
Subject: [change] Kony 2012
To: "Yaw Anokwa" <yanokwa@gmail.com>
Cc: "Change Group" <change@change.washington.edu>

I think the Invisible Children response is great but I feel that it fails
to address one of the biggest problems with their campaign which one
of my friends captured by referencing Paulo Freire's theory of False Generosity:

"When a system is structured so that there are oppressors and oppressed,
some of the oppressor class feel genuine compassion toward the suffering of the oppressed.
They move to isolate that suffering and to aid it, not to address the structures of society which
are the root causes. Thus, to the extent that they relieve any suffering they do so by hiding from
themselves the genuine causes, their own privilege as oppressor class members."

An over-simplification perhaps but that's what the Kony 2012 campaign smacks of to me.
-amer

On Mar 8, 2012, at 3:56 PM, Yaw Anokwa wrote:

> Invisible Children has written a response at
> http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html
>
> http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/post/18954353409/not-alone has links
> to other critiques.
>
> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 19:32, Yaw Anokwa <yanokwa@gmail.com> wrote:
>> You may have heard about Kony 2012. It is a film and campaign by
>> Invisible Children that aims to make "Joseph Kony
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony) famous, not to celebrate
>> him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for
>> international justice." The film is at
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc.
>>
>> While almost everyone agrees that Joseph Kony is a bad person,
>> Invisible Children has been criticized for their approach. Grant
>> Oyston lays out some of those arguments against Kony 2012 at
>> http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/post/18890947431/we-got-trouble. The
>> follow on posts are also informative.
>>
>> The spread of the Kony meme, both for and against, has been possible
>> only because of social media. In that sense, it's quite relevant to
>> those of us interested in leveraging technology for change...
>>
>> Yaw
> _______________________________________________
> change mailing list
> change@change.washington.edu
> http://changemm.cs.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/change


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--

Varun Arora
Information Systems Management | Class of 2012
Carnegie Mellon University

Mobile/Cell: +1-412-478-2164
varora@andrew.cmu.edu
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Carnegie Mellon University