CBC radio 1’s Jian Ghomeshi conducted a “rare” interview with Jason Russell of KONY2012 fame this week. Russell, who is on some kind of media tour (he indulged the most prominent British media outlet in an interview that was an embarrassment to that paper, a few days ago and now Canada of course) remains brazen […]
The Guardian’s Sunday edition, The Observer, have run the puff-piece nobody else wanted, a lengthy tête-à-tête with Jason Russell of Invisible Children infamy. “Jason Russell: Kony 2012 and the fight for truth” (illustrated by the photograph above) is a dreadful, half-assed piece of reporting that seeks to help resuscitate Russell’s broken credibility.
Remember that little video campaign called #Kony2012? Yeah, we wish we could forget too. Few videos have reached the magnitude of pestilence that the non-profit Invisible Children’s video achieved this year. By transforming a complex regional crisis involving the Lord’s Resistance Army into a simple, manufactured (and in some ways factually false) narrative about the […]
As much as I tried, I can’t seem to like the new video by San Francisco-based NGO Mama Hope. Four young Kenyans sit on a bench talking through the worst stereotypical depictions of African men in Hollywood movies. We get to see these clips (which don’t not tell us much; the clips don’t make sense […]
Data Scientist at the New York City start up SocialFlow, Gilad Lotan, analyzes social media data. AIAC met Lotan at SXSW and asked him what he has found out about how Twitter was used for #Kony2012.
What people think about #Kony2012 is now somewhat coloured by the public meltdown of one of its co-leaders Jason Russell (he was arrested yesterday in San Diego for exposing himself and hospitalized). Nevertheless, Invisible Children’s methods of organizing and use of social media still needs to be debated.
To British eyes the polished, high-gloss viral campaign of Invisible Children’s 26 minute video–with its high-end production, fast paced edits and expensive motion graphics–clearly favors the grabby style of American political campaign imagery, a style that is increasingly adopted in the British party political broadcasts too. It’s an immersive, yet distinctly oppressive style of polemic film making. But how are the rest of British media reporting and analyzing this business?
#Kony2012 is no joke (millions of people still send money to Invisible Children and one of its first public critics, a Canadian student who runs a tumblr blog called Visible Children, has received death treatsthreats), but it hasn’t stopped the comedians from coming out. Here’s a few floating around in our inboxes, or passed around […]
It has come to this. Musicians, especially rappers, had to wade in. Like everyone else who is now an expert on Uganda, they were quick to declare themselves on board with #Kony2012.* But some have taken it further. They had to release songs (already). You can imagine the deep thoughts encased within lyrics that had […]
The boy had lost his brother, and as he wept before Jason Russell’s camera, Jason Russell brushed back the loose strands of his magnificent blond coiffure (who will play him in the movie version?) and told the boy in hushed tones: “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Jason Russell promised the boy that he, Jason Russell, would do […]
