I find Twitter an indispensable tool in gleaning the important headlines of the day with a quick glance. Staying up to date is only made easier by the trending feature, where the network's most tweeted topics are categorized for searching. This week, I was shocked to see #StopKony explode virally. #StopKony refers to Joseph Kony, the Ugandan leader of the Lord's Resistance Army — a violent campaign to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish a theocracy. Kony is, in every sense, a war criminal — the LRA has abducted and forced an estimated 66,000 children to fight for them since the Ugandan rebellion began in 1986.
Hashtags like #StopKony should be beneficial to a global conversation on human rights…right?
My issue with the rise of #StopKony's popularity was not because it raised awareness of child soldiers and slaves in Uganda, but rather the online community's blind approval of the organization behind it — the controversial non-profit organization Invisible Children and its new video "Kony2012."
I first encountered Invisible Children when a chapter was established in high school. I was moved by the organization's heart-wrenching videos of African children toting enormous guns and their staggering (I later learned, exaggerated) statistics.
By the numbers, Invisible Children spent nearly nine million dollars last year. Only 32 percent of that figure, however, went toward direct aid in Uganda. As a nonprofit, IC's earnings must be made public, though it has failed to be externally audited it is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau. Basically, Invisible Children is a financially questionable organization, yet it continues to receive donations.
Besides supporting an organization that's lacking in financial transparency, those users who retweeted #StopKony were largely unaware of the solutions Invisible Children proposes to end child soldiering. Military intervention and economic development initiatives with distinctly colonialist undertones are considered the ultimate answer for ending the influence of the LRA, which left Uganda in 2006.
The organization also does not publicize the fact that the U.S. Africa Command has already sent troops to seek Kony on multiple occasions. These failed missions only exacerbated the killing of children — Kony's bodyguards — in retaliation. Instead of first looking toward indigenous solutions to approach this complex historical and political conflict, Invisible Children simplifies the issue to good versus evil. Thus IC's humanitarian agenda shields it from any kind of criticism — after all, who doesn't want to end child warfare in Africa?
I'm not discrediting the terrible reality of the situation. Joseph Kony's evil is undeniable, I'm just not sure exactly how we #StopKony. But there is something to be said about the way people so fervently took up this cause without fully knowing the organization promoting the hashtag. It's ironic that the "Invisible" Children are just now gaining momentum online, because for many local and regional communities, these children have been visible for over 25 years. It's only now — when an expensive, artsy new video takes over Twitter — that child soldiers receive widespread attention.
Social media has revolutionized the way we share and consume media, but that doesn't free us from our responsibility to research and form individual opinions.
Instead of re-posting something our friends "like," we must be diligent about looking into the causes we champion. I just ask that you find out who you support when you hit that "send" button.
— Brelage is a junior from Indianapolis majoring in English writing and anthropology. She is currently interning at C-SPAN in Washington, D.C. opinion@thedepauw.com