Monday, April 23, 2012

Slacktivism

The last class we discussed whether or not the revolution would be Tweeted.  This debate made me think of the whole Kony 2012 ordeal earlier in the year.  My Facebook news feed was chock-full o' Kony stories detailing how he had committed many atrocities in Uganda, stealing kids from their homes and forcing them into his army.  The whole time I felt like this is terrible, but are these people really that invested in this cause?  It's easy just to post something, but its a whole other story to actually go to Uganda and do something about it.  Eventually the guy who started the whole Kony craze with a half hour long documentary (for the invisible children organization that has commercials on TV) was caught in some public scandal, and the organization was under fire for shady usage of the money it raised.  Then the Ugandan government said that the documentary put their country in a negative light, and that Kony had been out of the country with hardly any support for 6 years. 

Although it seemed like Twitter, Facebook, etc. were raising a ton of awareness for people who couldn't easily take to the internet, it was not up to date information, and most of the people posting were not actually invested more than a quick status update. 

I think that there is no way that any huge political change won't be covered on the internet and fill up social networks with info, but I don't know if those who are directly involved will be using Twitter right away.  I think that after some action goes down, then the social network sites will play a larger role.

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