KONY 2012 and the Age of Online Activism

The KONY 2012 campaign is a great example of how people can come together to raise awareness on an important topic.

I work for a labor organization and a great deal of the work we do is tied to feet on the street. We organize people and money for the benefit of our members and society. When it comes to doing online activism, this is still something that is new in the social justice arena.

Yes, it’s easy enough to create a Facebook page or a Twitter page and send out an email now an then. But those types of efforts rarely have a major impact when they are done as items on a check off list and not as a significant and urgent component of a campaign. The KONY 2012 campaign does just that.

The KONY 2012 campaign includes a strong narrative in regards to the devastating effects of children being recruited into a personal army and it uses new media to help get the message out. At the time of this post, the KONY 2012 video has over 43,300,000 views on YouTube, is filling up Facebook timelines, and is trending on Twitter with the “Uganda” and “Invisible Children” terms.