Challenging humanitarian communication: An empirical exploration of Kony 2012

Introduction

On 5 March 2012, American NGO Invisible Children (IC) released a campaign video calling for the arrest of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. Part of IC’s ongoing efforts to raise public awareness for the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony’s Lords Resistance Army (LRA) such as torture, mass rape, and the enslavement of children, Kony 2012 soon became the fastest spreading internet video of all times. Within the first 6 days after its release, the 30-min clip was accessed more than 100 million times, spreading more quickly than any Internet video had before (Visible Measures, 2012). Within days of its unparalleled online success, broadcast and print media picked up the story, yet soon shifting their attention to voices of criticism that attacked the video’s form, message, and makers.

Empirically based on an online survey, the present study aims to explore Kony 2012 from an audience perspective. While Kony 2012 has received some substantial academic attention from the fields of human rights and development studies (e.g., Drumbl, 2012; Gregory, 2012; Hickman, 2012; Karlin and Matthew, 2012; Waldorf, 2012) much less has yet been published on the phenomenon within journalism and media studies (Madianou, 2012; Nothias, 2012). Existing works have embedded the rise and fall of Kony 2012 in ongoing theoretical debates, discussed its media coverage and expert reactions, or scrutinized the video itself as a novel form of engaging Western publics through humanitarian communication. What is suspiciously absent from this literature on Kony 2012 are empirical data on viewers’ behavior and perceptions. ¹ We argue that an audience-focused exploration of the Kony 2012 phenomenon is of substantial interest to media scholars for a number of reasons.

Firstly, and most evidently, Kony 2012 is by far the most publicized online humanitarian campaign ever produced. The video was particularly successful in reaching its chief target group, i.e., young Internet users in the US. According to a Pew Research Center telephone poll conducted in the days after the release of the video, 58% of US respondents younger than 30 years stated that they had heard about Kony 2012, and almost one in four said they had watched at least part of the video (Pew Research Center, 2012). Secondly, the immense online success of a piece of humanitarian communication that addresses a violent conflict in Africa might be construed as debasing claims of a general moral apathy or a Compassion Fatigue among Western audiences (Moeller, 1999). Thirdly, the massive critical backlash that followed the release of Kony 2012 is indicative of the new challenges faced by humanitarian organizations as storytellers of distant human suffering. These challenges have been understood as brought about by increasingly critical media consumers and a general public disenchantment with humanitarian organizations (Boltanski, 1999; Chouliaraki, 2012; Cottle and Nolan, 2007).

With this article, we aim to explore in some detail the moral pressure that the video succeeded in exerting on its viewers. In particular, the study was motivated by the immense critical backlash that followed the release of the video. We explore how the moral pressures built up by Kony 2012 might have been mitigated through criticisms of the video and the organization IC. Given the unprecedented viral success of Kony 2012, its study offers us an opportunity to contribute to larger scholarly debates on Western audiences faced with representations of suffering in non-Western countries. Before we develop our theoretical argument, we first provide some background on the context, content and public reception of Kony 2012.

Background: IC and Kony 2012

Founded in 2004 by a group of young American film makers, IC’s stated aim is to raise public awareness for the LRA’s human rights abuses and in particular their use of child soldiers in Uganda and other Central African countries. While IC also runs and directly supports humanitarian projects on the ground, the production and distribution of highly engaging communication material has always been at the very core of the organization’s activities (Brough, 2012; Swartz, 2012).

IC makes extensive use of various social media platforms in all aspects of their communication efforts. Since its formation, the organization has thus been successful in rallying support and recognition for its brand through various online campaigns, the distribution of merchandise such as t-shirts and wristbands, the setting-up of university/high-school working groups and the organization of public events across the US. At the time of the release of Kony 2012, IC could rely on an extensive network of members and highly engaged supporters in the US (Karlin and Matthew, 2012; Swartz, 2012).

As Swartz (2012) has shown, the strategic use of narrative, and in particular the telling and re-telling of IC’s ‘founding tale’ is at the core of IC’s success. It is this ‘founding tale’ which is presented to the viewer at the beginning of the Kony 2012 video to introduce the work of IC. The narrator and main protagonist of the video is IC co-founder Jason Russel, an American filmmaker in his early 30s who, while traveling in Uganda with his friends, learns about the atrocities committed by the LRA. The video provides a documentary-style account of how Russel talks to former LRA child soldier Jacob, who recounts his ordeal of fleeing from the LRA and witnessing his brother being slaughtered by LRA soldiers. Disturbed and moved by Jacob’s story, Russel makes a promise on camera to stop the LRA. The video continues to tell the story of how, once back in the US, Russel and his friends rally support to stop the LRA and how—through the power of social media—a grassroots movement rises, aiming at fulfilling the promise made to Jacob. The video documents IC’s efforts to ‘make Kony famous’ by engaging popular artists and pressuring US policy makers in order to ensure the continuation of US military support to find Joseph Kony. A key figure for the narrative structure of the video is Russel’s son Gavin, in his role as the carefree American counter-part to Jacob, the former child soldier, as well as a conversation partner and bridge character to whom Jason explains the conflict—and thereby to an assumingly equally uninformed audience. As a piece of humanitarian communication, Kony 2012 sticks out as an exceptionally professionally produced, fast-paced, highly emotive short-film. Indeed, as Waldorf (2012: 469) aptly remarks, it ‘looks more like an episode of “America’s Most Wanted” than a children’s charity appeal.’

On first sight, the core message of Kony 2012 is about the need to create awareness for atrocities committed by Joseph Kony and to have him tried by the International Criminal Court. However, this message is embedded in and made effective by a larger narrative about global human solidarity brought to its full potential through the power of technology. This is a narrative about how, through social media, a young Western public now not only knows and cares about what is happening in the world, but also has the means to make a difference (see also Madianou, 2012). It is emblematic that the first narrated sentence in the video addresses the pervasiveness of Facebook and not Joseph Kony’s atrocities: ‘Right now, there are more people on Facebook that there were on the planet 200 years ago’.

Critical backlash

Soon after its release, Kony 2012 and its makers were confronted with a plethora of criticism, mostly from professionals in the humanitarian field, journalists, academics and bloggers in Central-Africa (see e.g., Chalk, 2012; Nothias, 2012). As the critical reception of Kony 2012 plays a central role in the present study, this section provides a brief overview of the main themes of criticism that emerged in public discussions. ²

In his analysis of the video, Hickman (2012) shows how Kony 2012 seamlessly draws on almost all established modes of documentary film making to engage the audience with the narrative and to promote action in the form of sharing the video, donating money, ordering a Kony 2012 action kit and contacting politicians in order to ‘make Joseph Kony famous’. However, one mode, the ‘observational mode’, is noted as suspiciously absent: ‘[W]hat is missing from the film is any sustained first-hand exploration of the war itself, in the villages of northern-Uganda and other places directly affected by Kony’s atrocities’ (Hickman, 2012: 477).

This observation ties into one of the main points of criticism dominating the public discussion quickly after the film’s rise to online fame: the focus on Western heroism and the near absence of African voices in a video about an African conflict. Consequently, allegations were voiced that the video is firmly rooted in neo-colonial discourses of superior and active Western heroes—contrasted against the passive and incompetent African victim ‘as completely disempowered and in need of Western intervention’ (Madianou, 2012: 10). This charge was further corroborated by the fact that almost all of the Africans depicted in the movie are children, the ‘ideal victims’ in the representation of distant suffering (Höijer 2004; see also Moeller, 2002). Issues of agency were also at the core of much of the criticism coming from Uganda, as voiced by Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire in one of the most widely spread critical video responses from the region.

Another key point of criticism was directed at the way the video simplified a long-running and complex conflict, by seemingly reducing the problem to one locality (Uganda), a single root cause and a sole incarnation of evil in the person of Joseph Kony. Finnström (2012: 128) even asserts that the video ‘conveniently reduces a very complex conflict, with northern Uganda as its historical epicentre, to a colonialist “Heart of Darkness” stereotype of primitiveness’. Along the same lines, Drumbl (2012) criticizes the video’s flawed and simplified depictions of the complexities surrounding the issue of child soldiers fighting in African conflicts.

Equally forceful criticism was launched at the action that is promoted in the video. The propagated US military support for the Ugandan army was attacked as naïve and short-sighted; as obscuring real US interests in the region; and as ignoring the notoriously bad human rights records of the Ugandan army (see also Finnström, 2012).

Besides the video itself and the actions it propagated, it was the organization IC that soon also became the target of harsh criticism. These attacks were mainly based on allegations that the organization had in the past spent a disproportionate amount of raised money on advocacy work, traveling and producing campaign videos, rather than on its programs in Central Africa (Chalk, 2012). In addition, the general trustworthiness of IC was questioned as reports emerged that in 2011, a US-based charity rating agency had given the NGO a mere two-out-of-four rating for financial transparency and accountability. ³

In retrospect, it is evident that no one, least the makers of Kony 2012, had anticipated the impact of the video. As one of the founders of IC pointed out, Kony 2012 was not meant to become an object of critical analysis by intellectuals, journalists and bloggers worldwide: ‘Our films are made for high school children. Our films weren’t made to be scrutinized by the Guardian’. ⁴

On a broader level, those who had shared the Kony 2012 campaign through social networking sites were soon ridiculed for engaging in just another form of online ‘slacktivism’, i.e., a low-intensity, low-commitment, and low-impact form of political engagement (Christensen, 2011). As one of the most vocal critics of technology-centered Internet euphoria, Evgeny Morozov (2012: 186) argues, the real motivations to support causes such as Kony 2012 are by no means to be found in an authentic engagement with the cause at hand: ‘The problem with political activism facilitated by social networking sites is that much of it happens for reasons that have nothing to do with one’s commitment to ideas and politics in general, but rather to impress one’s friends’.

At the same time, these criticisms should not disguise the fact that the scale of engagement created by Kony 2012—as shallow, uninformed, self-complacent and fleeting as it might have been—was unprecedented in the field of online humanitarian communication. While critical towards the content of the video, Waldorf (2012: 471) therefore rightly warns against overlooking an enormous and possibly untapped potential: ‘Kony 2012 offers a militant and millenarian version of human rights. Such triumphalism is deeply problematic, but it’s a whole lot more galvanizing than pity’.

Also characteristic for this new ‘version of human rights’ and undoubtedly partly responsible for its appeal, is the fact that Kony 2012 presented not merely a neatly demarcated and carefully isolated problem definition, but also a set of clear-cut and seemingly straightforward solutions. As Bratich (2012) argues, this is part of what sets Kony 2012 apart from more open-ended and unpredictable online movements such as the Occupy Wallstreet Movement. Bratich draws our attention to the evident but important point that Kony 2012 very rigorously pre-defined certain types of actions as viable and appropriate (share the video, buy the action kit, put up posters, etc.) thus discouraging audiences to engage in other and more radical means of fighting global injustice and pushing for political change. This echoes criticism against online ‘slacktivism’, that supposedly diverts political energy away from other means of participation that would have more of an impact (Christensen, 2011; Morozov, 2012). As Chouliaraki (2012: 76) has laid out, appeals such as Kony 2012 may ‘be mobilizing a momentary activism but do so at the expense of cultivating a deeper understanding of why humanitarian action is important’ (p. 76). Similarly, in a more radical version of the same argument, Dean (2010) makes the case that these forms of online media activism typically perpetuate global inequalities of the status quo, rather than challenge them.

Representation of suffering and media-induced cosmopolitanism

As a piece of humanitarian communication, Kony 2012 aims to build up a sense of moral responsibility and pressure to act among its viewers. Various attempts are made throughout the video to connect the suffering in Central Africa to the live world of Americans, for example by contrasting the care-free live of Russel’s son Gavin with that of children abducted by the LRA. The viewer is prompted to not merely take notice of the accounts of suffering, but to regard them as carrying a personal moral obligation to act. For example, we see Russel driving through a camp for internally displaced children hiding from the LRA, expressing his moral indignation: ‘I cannot believe this […]. If this happened one night in America, it would be on the cover of Newsweek’ (Invisible Children, 2012: 5:47).

The video hereby finds part of its moral rationale in what Höijer (2004: 514) calls a discourse of ‘global compassion’, which calls for ‘a moral sensibility or concern for remote strangers from different continents, cultures and societies’. In recent years, an increasing number of media scholars have started to theorize the media’s potential of extending the moral horizons of Western audiences (Chouliaraki, 2006; Ong, 2009; Silverstone, 2007; Tester, 2001). Much of this work revolves around the concept of cosmopolitanism. Originated in sociology as a sub-theme within the literature on globalization (Szerszynski and Urry, 2002), the concept of cosmopolitanism has increasingly found its way into the field of media studies (see Ong, 2009). Here, scholars have theorized on the potentials and limitations of representations of distant suffering to foster new moral sensibilities and reduce the distance between (typically Western) audiences and (typically non-Western) victims of humanitarian crisis (see Boltanski, 1999; Chouliaraki, 2006; Silverstone, 2007). For the case of disaster news, Chouliaraki (2006) argues that norms of cosmopolitanism embedded in media texts can render the mediated suffering of a distant other morally relevant for the spectator. She shows how different ideal types of disaster reporting can serve to block or cultivate a cosmopolitan imagination towards the distant other.

However, the current literature on audiences vis-à-vis distant mediated suffering is characterized by a considerable bias towards works of theoretical reflection rather than empirical investigations. As Seu (2010: 439) observes, ‘[v]ery little empirical research has been carried out […] on how audiences respond to communication about distant suffering, even though many assumptions have been made about what happens in this space’ (see also Höijer, 2004; Ong, 2009). Indeed, empirical works in the field have almost exclusively focused on studying representation, rather than audiences (e.g., Joye, 2009). This study aims to add to the sparse body of studies in the field that place their empirical focus on audiences.

It has been argued by Madianou (2012) that despite its focus on care and moral responsibility for victims of distant suffering, Kony 2012 is not what she calls a ‘cosmopolitan project’. Specifically, Madianou (2012: 13) notes that the call for action conveyed in the video is ‘not embedded in an understanding of the suffering and a moral orientation towards distant others’ (p. 13). Also, many of the propagated action for the individual viewer—sharing the video, buying Kony 2012 paraphernalia—are directed towards one’s own (online) peers and are thus arguably more oriented towards a communitarian ‘us’ than a cosmopolitan ‘them’.

And indeed, part of what makes Kony 2012 such a worthwhile object of study for media scholars is that its narrative is not merely rooted in a discourse of global compassion. Rather, the video constructs the image of a new ‘we’, a generation of connected, young, morally engaged and cosmopolitan individuals, who supposedly possess the will and—through the power of social media—the means to act effectively on the suffering of the distant other. As with all representations of distant suffering, Kony 2012 thereby constructs and relies on notions of an ‘us’ as well as of a ‘them’. This image of a new generation, of an ‘army of young people’ (Invisible Children, 2012: 16:25) is contrasted against those who are not regarded part of this alleged global community of technologically-savvy youngsters.

Crisis in humanitarianism

Any attempt to reflect on the phenomenon Kony 2012—both its content and its reception—would be futile without considering the changed environment in which humanitarian organizations find themselves today. The immense growth of the number of Western NGOs concerned with humanitarian crises in less wealthy, less politically stable and less peaceful parts of the world has led to increased levels of professionalization and bureaucratization in the sector, as well as fierce competition for visibility and public support (e.g., Chouliaraki, 2012; Cottle and Nolan, 2007). Simultaneously, rising public distrust towards humanitarian organizations and their financial transparency and political agendas have created new challenges for organizations such as IC.

In his seminal work, Luc Boltanski (1999) speaks of a ‘crisis of pity’, manifested in a public disenchantment with humanitarian organizations and their political motives. Boltanski also observes a heightened level of public suspicion towards the authenticity and truthfulness of representation, accompanied by a sense of powerlessness in the face of colossal injustices and humanitarian disasters of a complex post-Cold-War world. This public disenchantment with the humanitarian sector, the radical marketization of the field and the appropriation of new communication technologies have given rise to new sets of visual and narrative strategies to attract the attention, money and time of Western audiences (Brough, 2012; Chouliaraki, 2012; Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Vestergaard, 2008).

Chouliaraki proposes the label ‘post-humanitarianism’ to characterize these features of contemporary disaster reporting and humanitarian communication. In this new environment, humanitarian organizations focus more on branding strategies than on conveying universal messages of global solidarity and moral responsibility. According to Chouliaraki, post-humanitarianism also marks a shift away from challenging political and economic structures that reproduce injustice and suffering, towards largely apolitical and issue-specific appeals, which ‘privilege a self-oriented form of solidarity of short-term and low-intensity engagements with a cause, over an other-oriented solidarity of deeply felt, ideological commitments’ (2012: 55). In a similar vein, Brough (2012: 176) suggests that ‘the earnestness of “real” portrayals of suffering [prevalent during most of the 20th century] is being matched with—or even supplanted by—more lighthearted, postmodern pastiche and youth culture aesthetics, and glamorized or playful representations of the humanitarian donor-as-consumer’.

And indeed, it has been convincingly argued elsewhere that Kony 2012 is emblematic for this shift in humanitarian communication (Madianou, 2012; Nothias, 2012), one that is equally a move ‘from realism to postmodern mash-ups, spectacles of suffering to spectacular happenings, and sufferers/beneficiaries to activist/donors’ (Waldorf, 2012, p. 470). Kony 2012, in its ‘playful textualities’ is characteristic of post-humanitarian appeals (Chouliaraki, 2012) as it does not aim to provide ‘truthful’ or ‘objective’ depictions of suffering and skillfully avoids a systemic critique of historical or global socio-political injustice. For the most part, lived realities of rape, torture, and murder are invisible, or seamlessly fictionalized and sanitized through artistic means.

It is also evident, however, that while the suffering other is rendered voiceless and largely invisible, part of the video’s persuasive power in fact relies on norms of global solidarity and moral universalism. Throughout the video, various attempts are made to bring the distant other closer to the Western spectator—however simplistic and condescending these attempts might appear.

Critical audiences of humanitarian communication

Within post-humanitarianism as the dominant paradigm in approaching and representing the suffering other, Chouliaraki (2012) describes contemporary media audiences as highly skeptical towards representation, less likely to buy into moral grand narratives of global inequality, and more than ever aware that humanitarian organizations fiercely compete for their attention, engagement, and money. She conjures the image of the Ironic Spectator who is habitually skeptical towards truth-claims of representation and highly conscious of the marketing strategies of humanitarian organizations. It is the individual’s search for moral gratifications rather than moral imperatives of global solidarity that guide his or her decision to become engaged for a given cause. Chouliaraki (2012: 2) therefore characterizes the Ironic Spectator as ‘an impure or ambivalent figure that stands, at once, as skeptical towards any moral appeal to solidary action, and yet, open to doing something about those who suffer’.

By introducing and methodically theorizing the Ironic Spectator, Chouliaraki has opened up a fertile space for further theoretical and empirical efforts in the field. For example, Scott (2013: 345) has pointed out that ‘the extent to which this ironic spectatorship has, in actual fact, come to dominate humanitarian communication, requires further investigation’. Equally, it remains to be seen how different types of causes and appeals might invite varying degrees of ‘ironic’ appraisals by audiences.

For the case of Kony 2012, we argue that the image of the Ironic Spectator is particularly useful not just for making sense of the video’s initial enormous success online but also the massive critical backlash that followed. After all, it is the Ironic Spectator who would be absorbed by Kony’s apolitical, and issue-specific narrative and who would be swayed into self-referential actions of liking and sharing the video. And it is the same Ironic Spectator who, when given opportunity and space, would display equal levels of enthusiasm in the public bashing of a piece of humanitarian communication, questioning its truth claims, and its makers’ moral, financial or political intentions. As Brough (2012: 188) notes in her reflections on IC’s communication strategies (before the release of Kony 2012), ‘[IC’s media] are creating a space for idealism that works within the context of postmodernism and neoliberalism, which is precisely its promise and its peril’.

Research questions

This study on Kony 2012 aims to explore further whether the ‘ironic’ appraisals of humanitarian communication have had implications for the moral reception of the video. As Boltanski (1999: 177) has suggested

criticism of representation can […], if not prevail over concern about what is represented, at least encourage a suffering to be bracketed off and a doubt to be raised about its reality which […] no longer appeals to a demand for action with the same force.

In a series of focus groups, Seu (2010) explored these aspects of being a critical consumer vis-à-vis humanitarian communication. Seu found that when confronted with humanitarian campaign material that included a call for action, participants showed various methods of escaping the moral pressure created by the depictions of distant suffering. Building on Cohen’s seminal work on the political, social and psychological phenomenon of ‘denial’ (2001), Seu observed three main discursive repertoires employed to justify inaction that were manifested in three ‘strategies of denial’: (1) ‘the medium is the message’, where criticism is launched at the communication message as such, its form and truthfulness; (2) ‘shoot the messenger’, where the trustworthiness and credibility of the source of the communication message are challenged; (3) ‘babies and bathwaters’, where the validity of the action propagated by the appeal, such as donating money, is questioned. Based on her analysis, Seu concludes that by relying on these three discursive repertoires, participants were able to neutralize the moral pressure and ‘effectively justified their refusal to donate and their general passivity in response to the appeal, while retaining a position of human rights supporter and warding off potential doubting of their moral stance’ (Seu, 2010: 452).

Apart from being a rare example of systematic empirical work on audiences’ reception and appropriation of mediated distant suffering, what makes Seu’s work particularly valuable for the present study is the fact that the wave of criticism launched at Kony 2012 and IC seemed to be structured along the main themes of Seu’s three strategies of denial. First, the way the conflict as a whole and the suffering of the individual were depicted was criticized as feeding into a discourse that essentially contrasts Western superiority and heroism against African passivity and lack of agency (‘the medium is the message’). Second, quickly after the release of the video, IC found itself under heavy criticism for spending an allegedly disproportionate share of their resources on travel and campaigning, at the expense of their programs on the ground (‘shoot the messenger’). Third, the actions which were propagated in the video for the individual (donate money/buy action kit), and Western political leaders (support of Ugandan army) came under fierce scrutiny (‘babies and bathwaters’).

These three main lines of being critical are at the center of the present study. Empirically, this article thus builds for a large part on the three rhetorical repertoires identified by Seu (2010). In the construction of the survey, we borrowed from these rhetorical responses to mediated suffering that facilitate and justify the audience’s inaction—especially as this grouping has proven to capture well the most prominent sub-themes in the critical backlash of Kony 2012.

In particular, we explore the impact of being critical towards Kony 2012 on the individual’s perception of moral responsibility. As theorized by Boltanski (1999) and empirically demonstrated by Seu (2010), taking a critical stance towards humanitarian communication as an integral element of ironic spectatorship (Chouliaraki, 2012) might serve to obscure the reality of distant suffering and thus reduce moral pressure on audiences.

In sum, our research is guided by the following two research questions:

RQ1: To what extent did the Kony 2012 video evoke in its viewers a sense of personal moral responsibility to act?

RQ2: To what extent did critical appraisals of Kony 201 and Invisible Children mitigate this sense of personal moral responsibility to act?

Method and data

As part of a larger research project on Kony 2012, we conducted an online survey to empirically address our research questions. Invitations to participate in the survey were distributed on 04 April 2012 through various Email lists and communication channels of two large Dutch universities. As an incentive, participants could win one of 30 book vouchers. In total, 204 participants completed the survey. The sample varied considerably on age with a median of 24 (M = 28.0, SD = 8.8), and included slightly more women (54.2%). The majority of respondents were students (59.6%).

The survey consisted of six main sections. The first section included questions on background and demographics. The second section focused on general media usage patterns while the third section comprised questions on social and political engagement. In the fourth section, respondents were asked how and how much they had heard about Kony 2012 and if they had watched (part of) the video themselves. In the fifth section, a number of knowledge questions about information presented in the video were posed. In the sixth and last section, respondents were asked about emotional responses and attitudes towards the video, the issue of moral responsibility to act, as well as potential behavioral consequences such as sharing the video online or looking up additional information about the issue.

One of the key variables for the present study is the question about perceived moral responsibility to act after having watched (part of) the video. Using a 5-point Likert scale, respondents were prompted to disagree or agree with the statement ‘After watching the video I felt that I had a moral responsibility to act’. This wording is an adopted version of items used for measurements of moral responsibility in previous studies (Cameron and Payne, 2011; Small et al., 2007).

Besides asking through which channel respondents had heard about Kony 2012 we wanted to know if respondents had actually watched (part of) the video. Given that the video is relatively long by internet standards (30 min), we expected that many respondents would only have watched part of it. ⁵

As indicators of the three themes of criticism, we used four self-constructed items to capture the critical stance taken by respondents. All four items were measured on a 5-point Likert scale. As outlined above, these items that sought to measure the level to which respondents took a critical stance towards the video were constructed along the lines of the three rhetorical repertoires identified by Seu (2010). Specifically, the items pertained to the degree in which respondents took a critical stance towards the truth-value ⁶ and form of the video ⁷ (‘the medium is the message’), the propagated action ⁸ (‘babies and bathwaters’) and the organization Invisible Children ⁹ (‘shoot the messenger’).

Results

Hearing about and watching Kony 2012

Out of the 204 respondents who had completed the survey, a mere two reported to not have heard about Kony 2012. More than half (53.4%) reported to have heard a lot about the video, and a slightly smaller proportion said that they only heard a little (45.6%). The large majority had heard about Kony 2012 through social media platforms (72.3%), followed by those who had heard about it through television (11.8%). As shown in Table 1, about 4 in 10 respondents who had heard about Kony 2012 stated that they had watched the whole video at least once (41.2%), while another 29.4% had watched between 5 and 15 min. The 25 respondents who had not watched the video at all are excluded in all following analyses.

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Table 1.

Percentage of sample that had watched part of Kony 2012.

Has not watched the video	12.3% (25)
Watched no more than 5 min	7.4% (15)
Watched more than five but no more than 15 min	29.4% (60)
Watched more than 15 min, but not the complete video	8.8% (18)
Watched the complete video once	34.3% (70)
Watched the complete video more than once	6.9% (14)

Note: Values in brackets are absolute numbers.

Moral responsibility and critical appraisals

To explore the role of the three themes of criticism, we first conducted three simple correlation analyses of perceived moral responsibility with the critical stance towards of the message, the proposed action, and the organization. All relevant items except ‘I disliked the way in which the video approached the topic’, showed significant correlations with perceived moral responsibility (see Table 2). Distrust in the integrity of the organization, doubts about the truth claims made in the video, and disbelief about the efficacy of the proposed action were all related to lower levels of personal moral responsibility evoked by the video.

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Table 2.

Correlation between indicators of criticism and perceived moral responsibility to act after watching Kony 2012.

After watching the video …	I felt that I had a moral responsibility to act.	I believed that donating money to the organization that produced the video could help to change the situation for the better.	I disliked the way in which the video approached the topic.	I believed that the facts presented in the video are true.
I believed that donating money to the organization that produced the video could help to change the situation for the better.	.655**
I disliked the way in which the video approached the topic.	−.037	.005
I believed that the facts presented in the video are true.	.480**	.605**	−.140
I trusted the organization behind the video to spend the money they raise in a responsible manner.	.640**	.804**	−.048	.642**

Note: Values are Person’s r correlation coefficients. *p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .0001.

In a following step, we extended our analysis by conducting a regression analysis investigating effects on personal responsibility, while controlling for gender, age, NGO membership, and the duration of viewing. ¹⁰ The full regression model yielded an adjusted R² of 0.46 (F(11, 165) = 14.538, p < .001). Table 3 first shows the partial model without the themes of criticism indicators included (model 1). Results initially confirmed the previous finding that age has a significant positive effect (β = 0.27, p < .01) as well as the previously identified pattern regarding viewing duration, with strongest moral pressuring found in respondents who had watched between 5 and 15 min. In the second model, we included the indicator variables of the different themes of criticism. The evaluation of the trustworthiness of the organization (β = 0.30, p < .01) and of the effectiveness of the proposed action (β = 0.34, p < .01) showed significant effects in the expected directions. However, judgments about the truthfulness of the video and the way the video approached the topic did not significantly impact the level of moral pressure. In summary, the analysis showed that the level of perceived moral responsibility was not significantly impacted by the way the story was told or by whether the representation was perceived as truthful. However, the moral responsibility as perceived by the spectator was affected significantly by the credibility of the organization and the evaluation of the act of donating as propagated in the video.

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Table 3.

Results of OLS regression models predicting perceived moral responsibility to act after watching Kony 2012.

	Model 1		Model 2
	Standardized coefficients	t values	Standardized coefficients	t values
Member of an NGO (no = 0 yes = 1)	−.06	−0.82	.00	−.01
Gender (W = 0, M = 1)	.02	0.28	.10	1.60
Age	.28	3.30**	.07	.92
Watched more than 5 but less than 15 min	.39	3.03**	.22	2.05*
Watched more than 15 but not whole video	.21	2.10*	.13	1.62
Watched whole video	.20	1.55	.16	1.50
Watched whole video more than once	.22	2.28*	.12	1.50
Believed that donating money to the organization that produced the video could help to change the situation for the better			.34	3.27**
Disliked the way in which the video approached the topic			−.05	−.75
Believed that the facts presented in the video are true			.03	.44
Trusted the organization behind the video to spend the money they raise in a responsible manner			.30	3.04**
Overall model	R2 = .193 Adjusted R2 = .160 F(7,170) = 5.823*** N = 178		R2 = .492 Adjusted R2 = .458 F(11, 165) = 14.538*** N = 177

Note: * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001.

Conclusion

The phenomenon Kony 2012 showcases the ‘crisis of pity’ that characterizes the contemporary environment that Western humanitarian organizations have to deal with in their role as storytellers of suffering. These organizations encounter an increasingly sceptic public, and a need for novel ways of engaging audiences with humanitarian causes. From the onset, Kony 2012 clearly attempted to circumvent some of the pitfalls that are characteristic for this new environment. It is no coincidence that the story that is presented is first and foremost that of an individual—Jason Russel—rather than one of an organization (whose name is only mentioned once in Kony 2012). In effect, viewers are discouraged from dwelling on organizational political agendas, on overhead costs, and on travel and administration expenses. The focus is on Jason Russel—loving father, compassionate campaigner and attractive male ¹¹ —who acts as personal mediator between the distant suffering other and the Western viewer. Nevertheless, IC soon found itself in the defence, struggling fiercely to defend their campaign methods, projects, and integrity. The organization even felt the need to release a second Kony video addressing these criticisms. ¹²

As a post-humanitarian appeal, Kony 2012 was initially immensely successful in rallying support for its cause and making millions of people watch, share and talk about the video. In our sample of 204 respondents, only two had not heard about Kony 2012 and a large majority had seen at least part of the video. Evidently, these figures need to be interpreted with some caution as data were drawn from a convenience sample comprising mostly students and university staff, a population that one might expect to be relatively well informed about current affairs.