Monday, March 12, 2012

KONY 2012, the Shifting Power of Media


In the article of the Revenge of Publicity, Barney and Darin explained how the road of justice is paved with more and better information and communication and how the technologies such as web 2.0 applications enables new forms of user-generated, multimedia content and social networking utilities. Truly, these platforms allow us to get multi-access to information, and generate millions of petition and vote. I think the most moving campaign which draws the support from Web 2.0 application is the campaign KONY 2012.

Have you ever heard of Knoy? if not, that means you are not addicted to social media enough.  

The video is about 28 mins, but worth watching. 





The video spreads across social media all over the nation and has been put the subtitle in many different languages. Now, over 75,000,000 views on youtube shows how powerful social media can be.

Also, this is a interesting social movement that involves activities with audience without traditional media. Traditional media is always used as the gatekeeper and decide what informations can be made onto the news, but have limited power to act independently. However, Kony 2012 is a great example of how this power is shifting. 

A 29 min video shows about Knoy's story: "a rapist, a kidnapper, and an amok". However, the justice hasn't been done because he is "invisible". Thus, the purpose of this Kony 2012 campaign is to make him famous. It is a renewed sense of hope and possibility of moving the agenda of power around. This movement has somehow impacted the hierarchy and privilege of mass media. Now the social media allows independent groups to gather people around talking about the issues, and then forced traditional media to pick up the story. This substantial leap has called for democratization of information access and provided a platform for people to speak out--on Facebook, twitter, or what ever people can spread the information. 


A video of KNOY 2012 campaign reported by ABC news

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVkmdVPdOQg


Updated March 13:

Another voice could be also found on internet: the campaign of Kony 2012 is wrong and misguiding. There is also a facebook page called "Defense Kony 2012". The freedom of Web 2.0 allows everyone to speak out, but can we speak out wisely and unbiased? Can social media confirm the reality of the news before it message was widely spread? These are still big questions left for us to think before throw the trust to "invisible" public.

But one thing I could see from the different opinions about Kony 2012: because the democracy of sharing information, we are able to publish, forward, share, and doubt, which is the most important thing.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2012/03/09/why-i-think-the-kony-2012-campaign-is-wrong/

2 comments:

  1. Social Media also allows people to quickly share information quickly without digging further into the subject. I agree with you that the Kony 2012 campaign is a great example of how Web 2.0 is changing how people access information. However I would argue much like the article about how groups function with various amounts of access to information, that this sharing doesn't lead us to accurate conclusions of the information we processed. We are getting less in-depth information about an ever increasing amount of subjects.

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  2. after the first time I saw this video, I shared it on my renren.com because i want to help ....but then I googled about Kony and found many argument and controversy about it. I started to doubt about it and now I still don't know whether this is true or not. Or as an audience, what should I do? I think sometimes network really makes people frustrated because it blinds people's eyes, although it helps people access to diverse information faster and easier.

    Amy

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