{"id":1349,"date":"2012-03-31T07:05:03","date_gmt":"2012-03-31T12:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/?p=1349"},"modified":"2012-03-30T18:43:21","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T23:43:21","slug":"kony-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/2012\/03\/31\/kony-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Kony 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"KONY<\/a><\/p>\n

This semester, I\u2019m co-teaching a human rights internship course. \u00a0Beyond providing some practical skills for students who are interested in working in the human rights field, the course aims to connect human rights theory to students\u2019 experiences in their internships.\u00a0 Needless to say, the Kony 2012 campaign was a perfect topic to discuss recently.\u00a0 However, since Invisible Children\u2019s Cover the Night event is coming up on April 20th<\/sup>, there is still plenty of time to discuss the campaign in class, and TSP has provided an additional tool (an episode of Office Hours discussed below) to aid in this discussion.<\/p>\n

As many (if not all!) of you know, Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 video quickly received over 100 million views.\u00a0 Over night, it seemed like many people who had never heard of Joseph Kony were calling for justice.\u00a0 However, the video sparked debate in scholarly communities, communities of human rights activists, and even among the broader public.<\/p>\n

During the week the video went viral, my students were reading James Dawes\u2019 book, That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity, <\/em>which explores motivations behind human rights work as well as the relationship between story telling and human rights.\u00a0 Specifically, the book’s emphasis on how human rights abuses are framed through stories made the book a perfect base for a discussion about the Kony 2012 campaign.<\/p>\n

As a class, we started talking about the book with the basic question of what storytelling has to do with human rights.\u00a0 After we established that we all learn about human rights abuses around the world through stories and representations on the news, in newspapers, and through various social movements and advocacy groups, we moved on to the Kony 2012 campaign.\u00a0 Most students had seen the video, but I asked a student to give a brief review in case someone hadn\u2019t seen it.\u00a0 Then, we discussed the following questions:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0 What is the purpose of the video?<\/p>\n

2 ) In your opinion, was Invisible Children successful in fulfilling this purpose?<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0 Why did the video go viral?\u00a0 (What properties of the video\/tactics of the campaign influenced its popularity?)<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0\u00a0 What are most common critiques of the video?<\/p>\n

5)\u00a0\u00a0 What are the difficulties in representing human rights abuses?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TSP member Shannon Golden also recently interviewed Amy Finnegan, who has studied the relationship between Invisible Children and local Ugandan activists.\u00a0 Amy and Shannon talk about the Kony 2012 campaign and Amy’s research in an episode of Office Hours located\u00a0here<\/a>. \u00a0This episode would be a great addition to the discussion or could be assigned as homework. \u00a0We know that many of you have also discussed this campaign in your classes and would love to hear about it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This semester, I\u2019m co-teaching a human rights internship course. \u00a0Beyond providing some practical skills for students who are interested in working in the human rights field, the course aims to connect human rights theory to students\u2019 experiences in their internships.\u00a0 Needless to say, the Kony 2012 campaign was a perfect topic to discuss recently.\u00a0 However, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[461,267,45],"class_list":["post-1349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-human-rights","tag-knowledge","tag-social-movements"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1349"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1360,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions\/1360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}