When the Internet Raises Social Awareness: The World Responds to #Kony2012 and #StopKony

Mar 7, 2012
8:02 AM

For all the Friday videos, 'Sh*t" memes, and images of dads shooting their laptops, once in a while good happens on the Internet and injustices become part of the global consciousness.

That is the case of #Kony2012 and #StopKony.

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

The campaign launched on March 5 and it has gone completely viral on the Internet. And that is a good thing. For more, here is the official page: Kony 2012. As for the story behind the story, this post from the UK says it best:

The non-profit company, Invisible Children, Inc. released a video on March 5th, 2012 to start their "Cover the Night" campaign. The aim of the campaign is to raise awareness and support for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in central Africa.

The "Cover the Night" campaign involves people either buying or printing off posters and covering the area they live in with them during the night on April 20th, 2012.

Invisible Children, Inc. hope that the volume of people getting involved in this will stop the US government from pulling out US forces which were deployed to Uganda on October 20th, 2011.

The organisers underestimated the support, their goal for the video was 500,000 shares and they have already received 1.5 million views on vimeo version alone, and is now rising at an exponential rate.

UDPATE: The whole campaign has cuased a buzzstorm of questions. Here are some facts about them.