Since the Kony 2012 video first appeared on YouTube March 5, it has become one of the most viral videos of all time.
Joseph Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Uganda and other central African countries.
He’s accused of forcing children to become soldiers for his Lord’s Resistance Army, killing and torturing thousands and forcing as many as two million people to flee their homes.
Invisible Children – the California-based group behind the video – wants Kony brought to justice
The stylish, fast-paced video urged young people around the world to hit the streets April 20 in order to take the message about one of the world’s most wanted criminals off the web and into their communities.
“Start making Kony famous today,” Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell says in the 30-minute-long clip. “But all of these efforts will culminate on one day – April 20th – day when we ‘cover the night.’ This is the day when we will meet at sundown and blanket every street in every city until the sun comes up.”
So after more than six weeks since the social media-driven campaign went viral, getting more than 100 million hits on YouTube, it’s apparently time to put hype into action.
The Kony 2012 organizers sold out of posters and publicity kits.
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In a video released Friday, they’re now saying print your own posters or do whatever you can to promote the fight against Kony.
It’s no longer just about promotion, they say.
Among the suggestion is organizing a community cleanup-an exchange for putting up Kony 2012 posters.
Picking up garbage to bring a war monger to justice?
Well, this is not the first time the campaign’s message has been adjusted somewhat.
There have been a lot of ups and downs for Kony 2012, and the organizers, since the movement began last month.
The group has responded to repeated criticism of the information it put out about Joseph Kony, including that he hasn’t been operating in Uganda for the last six years. The Lord’s Resistance Army has been operating primarily in Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Central African Republic and South Sudan.
There were also questions about how the group’s finances have been spent, spurred by a blog post by a Nova Scotia university student, which also went viral the same week the Kony 2012 video was released.
Shortly after that, Russell made headlines for a very public breakdown. He was arrested in San Diego after he was found naked and ranting in the street.
His family and Invisible Children co-founders said the mental health incident was a result of dehydration and the stress of the sudden popularity and scrutiny of the Kony movement.
He was hospitalized and has kept a low profile ever sense.
Questions have also been raised whether the campaign is counterproductive to ending human rights abuses in central Africa as the Ugandan government has been repeatedly condemned for human rights abuses. The Kony 2012 movement is urging the U.S. government to continue offering armed assistance in the hunt for the war lord.
There are also concerns it will be a futile movement as the last push to arrest or kill Kony was unsuccessful and actually led to more deaths, in other countries, being attributed to the Lord’s Resistance Army.
But all eyes are now on whether the social media campaign can put social media hype into action.
Many have accused the movement of being nothing more than “slacktivism” – activism for Internet slackers.
Tweeting the video is all well and good, but many wonder if it will really affect the fate of Kony.
The campaign seemed to be fading in popularity, when a sequel to the Kony 2012 video was released earlier this month – it’s only gotten about two per cent of the traffic the original video received following its immediate release.
The push was on this week as Invisible Children posted videos daily to YouTube, encouraging followers to take part in the Cover the Night event.
Invisible Children has asked participants to post pictures and videos as they plaster Kony posters and stencils around their cities. They’ll be following the action on Twitter with the hashtags #Kony2012 and #CovertheNight.
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