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Suspicious Sequel: The Social Flow of KONY 2012 Is Not What You First Thought

This article is more than 10 years old.

It gets worse. Today, Invisible Children will release the sequel to the KONY 2012 video, "Which will," according to Paul Ronan of theresolve.org, "highlight voices of people in LRA-affected areas and include more information about the April 20 global event." Considering the criticism that the first video received for not including more than a single Ugandan voice, and the fact that founder Jason Russell's public meltdown has drawn the very existence of any upcoming "global events" into question, a follow up video is an understandable next step. The sequel will almost certainly not have the reach of the original because 1) Kony is, if anything, overexposed in the global news cycle by now and 2) supporters and detractors have, for the most part, already made up their minds on the campaign. The viewership curve will be much flatter as a result of these two factors.

Most people in the tech world think of viral trends as originating on the coasts with early adopters and social media "influencers." But recent developments keep pointing to the rise of the "silicon prairie" with phenomena, like the rise of Pinterest, that move from the heartland outward. SocialFlow, a company that makes very impressive social media optimization software, has used Twitter to chart the rise of the original KONY 2012 video. They plotted all of the tweets with the #KONY2012 hashtag and organized the graph "using the OpenOrd layout algorithm which places highly connected users in close proximity, identifying major clusters within the graph." The most surprising pattern revealed by the resulting chart is, in fact, geographical.

SociaFlow's research showed that two main factors accounted for the viral spread of the KONY2012 video: 1) "Having pre-existing networks in place helped the initial spread of their message" and 2) "Attention philanthropy tactics activated celebrity accounts and drew substantial visibility." The second of these is fairly obvious. Celebrities have huge followings and to get your followers to inject your hashtags into the Twitter feeds of the likes of Oprah, Lady GaGa, Justin Bieber and Tim Tebow is bound to boost traffic. But the strength and specificity of the pre-existing networks is the real surprise here.

SocialFlow found "dense clusters of activity that were essential to the message’s spread: networks of youth that Invisible Children had been cultivating across the US for years. When Invisible Children wanted to promote this video, deploying the grass-roots support of these groups was essential." But who were these clusters comprised of and where were they located? "When we dig into the profiles that comprise the clusters, we see some fascinating characteristics emerge. Each cluster represents users from different physical locations," their report finds referring to the graph above. "The large cluster on the top right includes users from Birmingham Alabama who were some of the earliest to publicize the video. The cluster is substantially larger than the others, leading us to believe that Invisible Children had strong roots in Alabama. Additionally, the hashtag#Kony2012 initially trended in Birmingham on March 1st, a few days before the video was even placed online. Other clusters in the graph include Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City and Noblesville Indiana." But not only were there geographical clusters, but cultural clusters as well, "This movement did not emerge from the big cities, but rather small-medium sized cities across the Unites States. It is heavily supported by Christian youth, many of whom post Biblical psalms as their profile bios."

Truth Wins Out has just "obtained exclusive audiotape from a 2005 Christian conference in San Antonio where Invisible Children’s co-founder Jason Russell calls his organization a 'Trojan Horse' to introduce the secular realm to his group’s version of Christian fundamentalism. The audiotape reveals that that his organization is particularly focused on targeting youth in public high schools. According to Russell’s remarks (:44)":

“Coming in January we are trying to hit as many high schools, churches, and colleges as possible with this movie. We are able to be the Trojan Horse in a sense, going into a secular realm and saying, guess what life is about orphans, and it’s about the widow. It’s about the oppressed. That’s God’s heart. And to sit in a public high school and tell them about that has been life-changing. Because they get so excited. And it’s not driven by guilt, it’s driven be an adventure and the adventure is God’s.”

So it is no accident that the configuration of these pre-existing networks of Christian youth were in place to spread KONY 2012. The groundwork had been masterfully laid for years in preparation.

Christianity has a long history of aligning itself with social justice, going all the way back to Jesus himself. So the support of Christian youth is not surprising or controversial in itself. What is problematic is that Invisible Children's building of that base of support was motivated by the social conservative alignment of some of its key backers. If you imagined that the rightward skew of the political "policymakers" who were also targeted for hashtag injection was accidental or an attempt to overcompensate for an excess sympathy for the left-wing media elite, think again. According to reporting by Jim Morrison of Gay newsmagazine publisher Here Media, Invisible Children has "ties to antigay organizations, such as the National Christian Foundation. The NCF describes itself as 'the largest Christian grant-making foundation in the world.' Truth Wins Out reports that the organization has disbursed grants to some of the most antigay groups in the country, including Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. Ironically, NCF, which donated $135,000 in 2009 to Invisible Children, also helps fund the Fellowship Foundation, which works in conjunction with the fundamentalist shadow organization known as 'The Family.' That outfit has largely pushed Christian Ugandan lawmakers to propose a 'kill the gays' bill, which would make homosexuality punishable by death."

Some attention has been focused on the cozy relationship between IC and the government of current Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni. But until the reports of Jim Morrison and Truth Wins Out, it has not been clear that the human rights abuses of Museveni's government include the promotion of an anti-gay agenda fostered by an American social conservative group that coincidentally funds Invisible Children.

None of this means that IC itself is anti-gay. Most American Christians, it should be pointed out, are not anti-gay, and many would be horrified to discover that a cause they are supporting has ties to any organization that is aligned with hate crimes of any kind. Violence against gays in Africa is epidemic and on the rise. "International human rights groups are reporting increases in hate crimes against gays and lesbians across Africa," reports Voice of America. "All over the continent, they say, homosexuals are being harassed and ridiculed, assaulted and arrested, tortured, jailed and murdered—and on an unprecedented scale. 'We have seen an upsurge of violence, of discrimination.…  You’ve got guys in Cameroon being arrested; you’ve got guys in Nigeria being killed for being gay.  It’s happening all over Africa,' says Denis Nzioka, one of East Africa’s most prominent gay rights activists.  'We’re under siege,' he adds in his Nairobi office." Is anti-gay violence a social evil on the scale of kidnapped child soldiers in Africa? I don't know. But the combination of IC's association with the NCF, their close working relationship with Museveni's regime in Uganda and Russell's assertion of using the videos as a "Trojan Horse," are enough to make many people who signed up for their April 20th action kit legitimately uncomfortable. Is Lady GaGa down with all that? I don't think so.

Alternet reports that in a visit to Liberty University, a Christian college, Jason Russell encouraged students to use "extremely low-key, or stealth evangelism." It seems that Russell and IC's stealth is running out.

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