Joseph Kony, the Ugandan warlord and leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), recently gained a sudden fame which he probably would have preferred to do without: he became the number-one enemy of internet users around the world, thanks to a viral online campaign launched by a US-based non-profit organisation.
Invisible Children posted a video called "Kony 2012 " on its Youtube account on March 5, 2012. In only seven days, nearly 80 million people have viewed it. Although it is undisputed that Kony is a criminal who has committed crimes against humanity and must be brought to justice, the viral campaign of Invisible Children fails to convince many, including myself.
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This strategy - which is not based on experts or specialists, but entertainment industry icons - is singular. This campaign is part of an ensemble theorised by French sociologist Guy Debord, who explained 50 years ago that mass disinformation carried out by the entertainment industry can, under certain conditions, counterfeit reality and make illusion appear as truth. A sentence he writes in the introduction to his essay on "The Society of the Spectacle" could just as easily be referring to the age of social media: Full story...
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Invisible Children posted a video called "Kony 2012 " on its Youtube account on March 5, 2012. In only seven days, nearly 80 million people have viewed it. Although it is undisputed that Kony is a criminal who has committed crimes against humanity and must be brought to justice, the viral campaign of Invisible Children fails to convince many, including myself.
(...)
This strategy - which is not based on experts or specialists, but entertainment industry icons - is singular. This campaign is part of an ensemble theorised by French sociologist Guy Debord, who explained 50 years ago that mass disinformation carried out by the entertainment industry can, under certain conditions, counterfeit reality and make illusion appear as truth. A sentence he writes in the introduction to his essay on "The Society of the Spectacle" could just as easily be referring to the age of social media: Full story...
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- American soldiers in Uganda...
- What is the Lord's Resistance Army?
- The Serbs and the propaganda manipulating machine...
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