The dangers of social network-based political action
Social networking is one of the most inclusive and accessible forms of media on the planet. People from any country can be linked with one another and directly communicate free of charge, writes Logan Park High School student Micaiah Derrett.
There is no doubt that this fairly recent technological development has the potential to be of great benefit to human rights' causes the world over, in terms of global awareness and support gathering.
My main concern regarding this strange and contemporary phenomenon of groups, personalities and fan pages is its potential to be abused or misused.
For the purposes of making this article relatable to the common reader, I am going to use the example of Joseph Kony, and the viral video calling for knowledge of his atrocious actions, that has recently swept the earth in a matter of days.
Joseph Kony is the leader of a rebel Ugandan guerrilla outfit known as the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army). He has had his arrest called for by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, and is accused of kidnapping Ugandan children and forcing them into his militia, or into the sex trade.
He is alleged to have forced some of these children to kill their own parents. A charity group called Invisible Children released a documentary style video to the world exposing Kony and the LRA to millions of people over Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.
In this video the leaders of Invisible Children call for the public to appeal to the government for United States military intervention in Uganda to assist the Ugandan army with new technologies and methods that are necessary in order to catch Kony.
At a glance, this seems like a just and entirely reasonable cause to people such as myself with relatively limited knowledge of the situation in Uganda. However, what scares me is the fact that in the video Invisible Children provide no references to their statistics concerning the numbers of people killed by the LRA.
As well as this lack of evidence concerning the main purpose of the video, it is also deceptively selective in terms of what information it uses to inform the viewer. There are multiple graphic images of the mutilated faces of the LRA's victims, but no mention of the injustices conducted by the Ugandan military whose support they condone. This seems to me to be a deliberate misuse of the power of social networking.
I will not hesitate in saying that Joseph Kony is a despicable human being, but I would never in my most wild and fantastical dreams consider supporting a military regime, monetarily or otherwise, that is responsible for the "wilful killing of citizens, torture and mistreatment and arbitrary detention..."-(www.hrw.org) such as the UPDF (Ugandan People's Defence Force).
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The dangers of social network-based political action