Abstract

Abstract: Revealing The Invisible Children

My research question is, can people think for themselves regarding the Kony 2012 campaign? This topic grew public interest overnight, literally. I went to bed one night, the world virtually unchanged, then the next day a random humanitarian movement emerged. A video was shared on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and the news spread instantly. In this video an organization named “The Invisible Children” are asking people all over the world, especially the United States, to help Ugandan children escape the control of a man named Joseph Kony and also to help the Ugandan military catch this man and regain control over Uganda.

Like many other people; when I first saw this campaign I wanted to help, unfortunately I did tend to "hop onto the bandwagon". However, not everyone was eager to go along for the ride. As fast as this video spread speculations of the campaign being a scam came popping up. In this paper I am going to gather as much research about this topic as I can to help find answers to questions that many people are asking; “Who is Joseph Kony? Who are The Invisible Children? Is this “humane movement” a scam? Should we allow our government to get involved? If this has been going on for years, why is there a big push to do something about it now?”

This video came out this year because 2012 is a critical year for the future of America; it’s the political season and millions of young people will be able to vote for the next president and other issues. The Invisible Children want to influence these young people to vote to allow US soldiers to search for the recently famous warlord, Joseph Kony. This is important Americans and people care about it because helping out seems like the right thing to do, however, we don’t want to be fooled either. I predict that I’ll find many sources claiming that it’s a scam, so that's an indication that there are people who can think for themselves without the influence of the media. From the things I have seen posted online it seems very apparent that the Invisible Children organization is just trying to raise money by influencing people through the media, however the issue it stands for, was real.