So today I hope to be done with the quantitative/empirical part of my analysis.
I am scrolling through loads and loads of newspaper/media articles published in Africa/Europe and the United States in the past 7 months and that in a way or another refer to IC.
I hope to be able to identity trends (or at least correlation) either by region, or by media type ( I did split it up by college/university newspapers, local newspapers, newswires, large-circulation newspapers and others).
I'm looking into which articles state the same information as IC about the conflict in Uganda (Joseph Kony = abducted children), which articles offer a more complex overview of the conflict, which ones only talk about IC's successes, awareness campains, movie screenings, etc.
My empirical observations will be posted soon, I hope... but in the meantime, I couldn't help it and needed share something that astounded me.
"Advocacy in a Box" Good or Bad???
The Advocacy Group in our class just finished their final presentation of their project and in doing so made some strong and somewhat controversial arguments about the effectiveness of IC's. The main point that I had an issue with was the argument that the "25 Action Kit" is a limited and ineffective way of marketing advocacy to the IC consumer.
Social media 2: Facebook
The wall of the Invisible Children’s Facebook displays an incredible number of posts by IC’s supporters. It was especially astonishing to see the real time updates on the number of people who “like” IC’s page. For example, take a look at the updates from the following days:
March 24, 2011
9:50pm: 358,849 people
10:15pm: 358,873 people
11pm: 358, 911 people
March 25, 2011
9:50pm: 359,500 people
10:15pm: 359,514 people
11pm: 359,532 people
aWAReness4IC
So we were having our regular Friday afternoon meeting, just like Asuka said in an earlier post. I went over to our Twitter to see if we had any new followers. We had been pretty psyched that @Invisible (IC's Twitter) had been following us the week of our interview with Jedidiah.
Alas! They stopped. =(
Alas! They stopped. =(
Link them all - where would social media take us?
So here we are at a Boulevard café on Friday afternoon as usual.
First hour passed by in a relaxed atmosphere as we chatted away about our progress and action plans for the up coming week. We will be writing up a script for our film and even making our own logo T-shirts! Please keep in mind though, we are critical about the merchandising aspect of the Invisible Children's project -what do their T-shirts speak about the people in Uganda? How is Visible People's T-shirts going to look like? Wait and see.
First hour passed by in a relaxed atmosphere as we chatted away about our progress and action plans for the up coming week. We will be writing up a script for our film and even making our own logo T-shirts! Please keep in mind though, we are critical about the merchandising aspect of the Invisible Children's project -what do their T-shirts speak about the people in Uganda? How is Visible People's T-shirts going to look like? Wait and see.
What does dancing have to do with war?
Interestingly enough, the clothing item with the most explanation on the IC store website is not about the IC campaign at all. They also sell a t-shirt to promote the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, which was founded by a friend of IC. This blurb appears below the LXD T-shirt:
The LXD Shirt represents the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, featured on the 2010 Academy Awards and founded by friend of IC and film director, Jon M. Chu. This shirt is made with 100% organic Ugandan cotton, through our continued work with EDUN LIVE. 50% of the proceeds go to IC to help end Africa's longest running war.
Wearing a Message???
Despite Invisible Children's lack of educational information available to their customer, it seems as though they still want people to be messengers of their campaign. Some of their products have catchy tag lines that imply that this t-shirt should spread a message and people are the mediums with which to do it.
Colorful images of some of our programs in east Africa. This shirt is sure to be a conversations starter.
Colorful images of some of our programs in east Africa. This shirt is sure to be a conversations starter.
Sick Tee! Thanks Man...
Invisible Children has a some what contradictory marketing strategy when it comes to their clothing line. Their online store is definitely more focused on intriguing the buyer with the actual clothing than it is with the message that IC is trying to spread. On the page where you can purchase their Crane 2 t-shirt there is a fascinating video at the bottom of the page.
"Does the manner in which Invisible Children selectively brands this conflict make the people of northern Uganda more or less visible?" Good question.
We got together for our weekly meeting this past Friday and tried to narrow down our central question and thesis. As Dr. Baines suggested, what we needed was some sort of thread to tie the five pillars of our project - Invisible Children's social media, its movies, its mainstream media coverage, its campaigns and website, and its use of "people media" - together. Invisible Children's brand is, after all, defined by each of these components.
After about an hour's worth of discussion, we hashed out the following all-encompassing question:
After about an hour's worth of discussion, we hashed out the following all-encompassing question:
Social media 1: Twitter
March 21st is a special day for 2 reasons:
First of all, today is an International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Second, today marks the 5th anniversary of Twitter!
First of all, today is an International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Second, today marks the 5th anniversary of Twitter!
Thinking about SNS: offline and online identity
Social Networking Sites.
In many respects, the social media/Social Networking Sites (SNS) are changing the ways in which we communicate and acquire information online. The social media created a new platform, or a public digital space that affects how we interact with one another. The increasing popularity of bite-size information seems to reflect the progressive changes in our concept of time, lifestyle and how we consume information.
Compared to a more personal style of online interaction through emails, SNS uses the online space for people to communicate publicly. As noted by Jedidiah, although there are debates as to whether online communication can substitute face-to-face interaction, what is interesting about SNS is that people can “see” what other people are talking, even if you are not directly involved in the conversation.
Of course, SNS is a great social tool to keep in touch with friends or acquaintances. But in addition, I think the potential and the effectiveness of SNS lie in the speed of real time updating of the information and the way it can be a great resource for like-minded individuals to share/collect information and collaborate towards the same goal, whether it be planning parties, school related events, or even politically related actions. The possibility of SNS depends on their users.
I hope this doesn’t sound too abstract, but I think SNS users live in 2 realities: one offline and another online. Once you log into your SNS account, you are consciously or subcontinuously making a switch between two identities. My point is not to argue that these two identities do not always coincide, but I just wanted to note that the SNS user’s online posts shape the identity of the user. And what is peculiar about SNS is that whatever the user posts online is visible to the rest of the SNS users who are connected to the user as a “friend” or a “follower” and the user also has a choice to make it visible to anybody with access to the internet.
This is probably enough from my rant on SNS – how does this all relate to the work of Invisible Children?
My thoughts started to spin around because of an answer I got from Jedidiah about a question I asked:
“When did Invisible Children started to use SNS and why?”
His answer was “from day 1” that IC was founded and he perceives SNS as a “manifestation of personality of the people who work here”.
In response to my other question about who updates the IC’s SNS, Jedidiah explained both the difficulties of coordinating the “level of cohesiveness” in representing the voice of IC [because the IC has multiple staffs who have access to their SNS account] but also the opportunities in using the SNS strategically to “be something that does not exist” by personifying the organization to give it a more human quality to the organization.
What does this really mean and how does it work? For the next blog post I will be exploring the theme of SNS in more detail, by analyzing the following SNS used by the IC:
· Twitter
· Facebook
Hope you are getting excited about our Visible People Project’s progress as we are!
Got a Twitter account? Follow or Tweet us @ visible_people :)
Our main question
So as Professor Baines suggested, we should come up with a central questions that ties all our pillars together. Not that we have talked with Jedediah, I think we all have a little bit clearer understanding of where our project is going, so I though it would be a good idea to start narrowing things down into a central thesis that we can relate all our pillars back to.
Skype interview with Jedidiah
It is March 16th, 2011.
The clock hit 1pm.
All of us were waiting for this moment.
"Hello?" [Caitlin]
"Hello Hello" [Jedidiah]
Today we got to officially Skype with Jedidiah from the Invisible Children!
Jedidiah has been with the Invisible Children for about 3 years, and he is currently working as a creative director and a brand manager for the organization.
We were so glad that we got an opportunity to connect with IC in person, and it was mind opening to be able to talk to someone from IC virtually but still face to face.
Although it is exciting to explore about something new, at least for myself, doing a research online on my pillar felt like sailing with no compass. But after our conversation with Jedidiah, I was able to see the 'person' behind the organization and I think I have a better sense of where I want to go with my research.
As for the first question, I asked Jedidiah about the significance of SNS in IC's project. He said that "social media is an important tool, but… [it is]… a facilitation of actual human engagement" and he believes the "fact that we connect in person" matters the most and the SNS are used to "live the echo of that connection online". He believes that SNS would not have the same degree of impact if there were no face to face communication to begin with. I think many people would find his point relevant on a personal level as Facebook users. Now I understand the role of SNS in IC's work as a way to "maintain a lot of supporters" (Jedidiah).
I will be posting more about our conversation about SNS with Jedidiah, but I will keep it here for now.
For about an hour, our team showered him with questions and Jedidiah was very supportive and answered each questions with an open mind. Thank you again Jedidiah!
We will be uploading the video clip of the whole interview soon so stay tuned :)
The clock hit 1pm.
All of us were waiting for this moment.
"Hello?" [Caitlin]
"Hello Hello" [Jedidiah]
Today we got to officially Skype with Jedidiah from the Invisible Children!
Jedidiah has been with the Invisible Children for about 3 years, and he is currently working as a creative director and a brand manager for the organization.
We were so glad that we got an opportunity to connect with IC in person, and it was mind opening to be able to talk to someone from IC virtually but still face to face.
Although it is exciting to explore about something new, at least for myself, doing a research online on my pillar felt like sailing with no compass. But after our conversation with Jedidiah, I was able to see the 'person' behind the organization and I think I have a better sense of where I want to go with my research.
As for the first question, I asked Jedidiah about the significance of SNS in IC's project. He said that "social media is an important tool, but… [it is]… a facilitation of actual human engagement" and he believes the "fact that we connect in person" matters the most and the SNS are used to "live the echo of that connection online". He believes that SNS would not have the same degree of impact if there were no face to face communication to begin with. I think many people would find his point relevant on a personal level as Facebook users. Now I understand the role of SNS in IC's work as a way to "maintain a lot of supporters" (Jedidiah).
I will be posting more about our conversation about SNS with Jedidiah, but I will keep it here for now.
For about an hour, our team showered him with questions and Jedidiah was very supportive and answered each questions with an open mind. Thank you again Jedidiah!
We will be uploading the video clip of the whole interview soon so stay tuned :)
And the response is...
...positive for the most part!
We just received some feed back from Professor Baines today in response to our proposal video. She seemed to enjoy our decision to make a video instead of writing out our proposal. I think it was also a great way for us to get used to the types of media and technology we will be using through out the project. In editing the video, we approached it as a sort of trailer for our project, just as any feature film has a trailer. And I think overall we presented the base of our project and where we want to take it well.
Professor Baines did have some constructive criticisms with regards to the enormity of our initial ideas for how we would carry out the project. I will admit that we do seem to have a pretty ambitious structure in mind, tying in many different media components. It will be a good idea for us to re-group following our interview tomorrow, as we will likely get a better sense of the direction we want to take the central question of our project after talking to Jedediah himself.
On that note, Professor Baines also suggests that we focus in on one specific question that will tie all of our pillars together. Right now, although we are all researching media, we are all sort of doing our own thing and then coming back to touch base with each other. We need to really get to the core of our arguments and agree on a central focus we want to each address with the different types of media.
Overall though Professor Baines was very excited for us to work on this project together. She has lots of faith in our ability to get our enormous project done if we choose to continue on with every aspect we outlined in our video. Thanks for the support Professor Baines!
Co-opt IC to increase your popularity?
So there is this rock/indie/folk music band called The Gallery... and they are participating to a contest. They hope to make it on the cover of the notorious Rolling Stones Magazine.
They created this page to gather support for their endeavour :
http://www.voteforthegallery.com/
They ask people to post it on their facebook wall...
What does this have to do with Invisible Children?
Hum, I don't know, maybe you can explain that to me :
The Gallery will give 10 cents to Invisible Children for every person who will share this page, up to 10 000 people (my math intuition tells me that this is up to 1 000 dollars).
Tell me what you think. Is this opportunistic? Or am I a harsh, stone-hearted, unsensitive and ungrateful critic?! Is it unfair to criticize people's generosity? After all donor's money, is money that can be put to some good use (...)?
What does this tells us about Celebrity humanitarianism?
By the way, an article written on that "news" makes very little reference to Uganda... the first paragraph states that IC is
"an inspiring humanitarian organization dedicated to working with people affected by Africa's longest running war"
... yet the article does not say where the heck this is war happening... untill the very last paragraph :
"Invisible Children is a social, political and global movement using the transformative power of story to change lives. By inspiring youth culture to value creativity, idealism and sacrifice, the movement fuels the most effective, adaptable and innovative programs in the world. Programs on the ground focus on long-term development through education and economic opportunities, while awareness and advocacy efforts focus on educating and inspiring the Western world to use their unique voice for change. The organization was created after the release of the 2004 film "Invisible Children: Rough Cut," a revealing documentary about the plight of child soldiers in northern Uganda."
This is also obscuring the fact that the conflict has now spead to bordering DRC and Sudan.
Is this type of coverage essentializing Africa? As if the location of the conflict did not matter... since the whole continent is "torn" by conflict, "backwards", unresilient, homogeneous (pardon my irony)...
What does that tells us on Western attitude towards humanitarianism? Do donors care about knowing where their money goes and why? Or are they complacent in their generosity?
Which information matters? A whole paragraph is worshiping IC's work, yet it is silencing the story of Uganda.
How is this example revealing of the Global North's attitude towards humanitarianism?
My sense is that it's a perfect example of Westerners congradulating each other for their good work, their generosity... buy hey : what work? Where? What for?
See the article :
http://hangout.altsounds.com/news/127304-the-gallery-supports-invisible-children-in-rolling-stone-contest.html
They created this page to gather support for their endeavour :
http://www.voteforthegallery.com/
They ask people to post it on their facebook wall...
What does this have to do with Invisible Children?
Hum, I don't know, maybe you can explain that to me :
The Gallery will give 10 cents to Invisible Children for every person who will share this page, up to 10 000 people (my math intuition tells me that this is up to 1 000 dollars).
Tell me what you think. Is this opportunistic? Or am I a harsh, stone-hearted, unsensitive and ungrateful critic?! Is it unfair to criticize people's generosity? After all donor's money, is money that can be put to some good use (...)?
What does this tells us about Celebrity humanitarianism?
By the way, an article written on that "news" makes very little reference to Uganda... the first paragraph states that IC is
"an inspiring humanitarian organization dedicated to working with people affected by Africa's longest running war"
... yet the article does not say where the heck this is war happening... untill the very last paragraph :
"Invisible Children is a social, political and global movement using the transformative power of story to change lives. By inspiring youth culture to value creativity, idealism and sacrifice, the movement fuels the most effective, adaptable and innovative programs in the world. Programs on the ground focus on long-term development through education and economic opportunities, while awareness and advocacy efforts focus on educating and inspiring the Western world to use their unique voice for change. The organization was created after the release of the 2004 film "Invisible Children: Rough Cut," a revealing documentary about the plight of child soldiers in northern Uganda."
This is also obscuring the fact that the conflict has now spead to bordering DRC and Sudan.
Is this type of coverage essentializing Africa? As if the location of the conflict did not matter... since the whole continent is "torn" by conflict, "backwards", unresilient, homogeneous (pardon my irony)...
What does that tells us on Western attitude towards humanitarianism? Do donors care about knowing where their money goes and why? Or are they complacent in their generosity?
Which information matters? A whole paragraph is worshiping IC's work, yet it is silencing the story of Uganda.
How is this example revealing of the Global North's attitude towards humanitarianism?
My sense is that it's a perfect example of Westerners congradulating each other for their good work, their generosity... buy hey : what work? Where? What for?
See the article :
http://hangout.altsounds.com/news/127304-the-gallery-supports-invisible-children-in-rolling-stone-contest.html
Getting ready to interview IC
So tomorrow is the big day! We will have an entire hour to ask our toughest questions to IC's communication manager.
IC heard our voice and responded. In turn, it is now up to us to confront IC on its role as a medium/platform for Uganda's (multiple) voices. Do these voices get lost in translation? Does IC try to avoid essentializing these voices? Is IC only concerned with the children's voices? Is there a way to overcome the dilemma of humanitarianism, between portraying the "african other" as a "victim" and attracting Western donors' attention?
This is a great opportunity for us to discuss critical questions that are not necessarily tackled on IC's website, on their multiple social networking accounts, in their movies or in mainstream media.
We will ask critical questions and hopefully , we will get critical (yet, down to earth) responses!
Looking forward to it.
IC heard our voice and responded. In turn, it is now up to us to confront IC on its role as a medium/platform for Uganda's (multiple) voices. Do these voices get lost in translation? Does IC try to avoid essentializing these voices? Is IC only concerned with the children's voices? Is there a way to overcome the dilemma of humanitarianism, between portraying the "african other" as a "victim" and attracting Western donors' attention?
This is a great opportunity for us to discuss critical questions that are not necessarily tackled on IC's website, on their multiple social networking accounts, in their movies or in mainstream media.
We will ask critical questions and hopefully , we will get critical (yet, down to earth) responses!
Looking forward to it.
Getting ready to interview IC from Visible People on Vimeo.
Why Visible People?
By naming our project, "Visible People", we hope to raise two issues that is pertinent not only to our critique of Invisible Children, but also to humanitarianism in general.
Children are often used as the face of advocacy campaigns and calls to donate to humanitarian relief efforts. Let's face it, pictures of suffering children bring in money. It's not a bad thing that people want to save children. Faces of suffering children cause us to feel compassion and empathy. We don't want kids to get hurt. No one does. It's a natural human response. It's also effective marketing. We want to point out that adults are also affected by natural disasters and political crises. By silencing the voices of these adults, a humanitarian organization oversimplifies the crisis and eliminates the possibility of peering into the deeper root causes.
That leads us to the second point. The name Invisible Children refers to the idea that the crisis in northern Uganda, in particular, the night commuters (children travelling each night to the town centre to sleep in order to avoid being kidnapped by rebel forces), had been invisible to the world. However, with IC's tireless advocacy campaign in North America and its focus on trying to raise awareness about the Uganda among the average North American teenager, has the focus shifted from Uganda back onto North America? Has the night commuter's own voice and the voices of the Acholi community leaders hidden behind glitzy IC campaigns to turn these North American teenagers into so-called humanitarians by simply joining a campaign to raise money?
Children are often used as the face of advocacy campaigns and calls to donate to humanitarian relief efforts. Let's face it, pictures of suffering children bring in money. It's not a bad thing that people want to save children. Faces of suffering children cause us to feel compassion and empathy. We don't want kids to get hurt. No one does. It's a natural human response. It's also effective marketing. We want to point out that adults are also affected by natural disasters and political crises. By silencing the voices of these adults, a humanitarian organization oversimplifies the crisis and eliminates the possibility of peering into the deeper root causes.
That leads us to the second point. The name Invisible Children refers to the idea that the crisis in northern Uganda, in particular, the night commuters (children travelling each night to the town centre to sleep in order to avoid being kidnapped by rebel forces), had been invisible to the world. However, with IC's tireless advocacy campaign in North America and its focus on trying to raise awareness about the Uganda among the average North American teenager, has the focus shifted from Uganda back onto North America? Has the night commuter's own voice and the voices of the Acholi community leaders hidden behind glitzy IC campaigns to turn these North American teenagers into so-called humanitarians by simply joining a campaign to raise money?
Visible People - our group project
In the next 3 weeks we intend to analyze critically IC's use of media.
This group project is part of a seminar on the Politics of Humanitarianism at the University of British Columbia.
In the syllabus, the assignment is described as follows :
Group Projects: In groups of 4-5, you will design a project that critically investigates some aspect of the advocacy and humanitarian organization Invisible Children.com, a group that has galvanized one of the largest lobbies in US history in response to a war in Africa and resulted in the passage of US legislation (2010) to stop the Lord’s Resistance Army. Started by three young American film-makers after they hitch hiked to northern Uganda with a camera bought on e-bay, it is today a multi-million dollar enterprise, using innovative social networking and creative communications. From roadies to ‘sit-ins’ and demonstrations, lobby days and lotteries, public challenges and competitions to economic development, infrastructure building and educational work, and interventions in peace talks and diplomatic circles, the Invisible Children are a rich example of storytelling that gives impetus to humanitarian action, including urging youth to think creatively on how to make a difference in their own day to day lives. Arguably, it is the ‘new breed’ of global citizenship and activism that turns the present humanitarian morass on its head. This is not without controversy. It seemingly turns suffering into a commodity, promotes war tourism and reproduces problematic racial narratives of saviours and survivors.
Each week your group will spend time on the Invisible Children.org website and researching the various facets of the initiative on the internet, we will briefly discuss your views and reactions as you learn and connect who is interested in what questions and aspects of investigation. The idea is to identify the different threads and form groups around these, some aspect of the movement (the policy, the fundraising, the humanitarian work, the advocacy) and for each group to take on some aspect of this.
So instead of submitting a written project proposal, we decided to do a video proposal....
This group project is part of a seminar on the Politics of Humanitarianism at the University of British Columbia.
In the syllabus, the assignment is described as follows :
Group Projects: In groups of 4-5, you will design a project that critically investigates some aspect of the advocacy and humanitarian organization Invisible Children.com, a group that has galvanized one of the largest lobbies in US history in response to a war in Africa and resulted in the passage of US legislation (2010) to stop the Lord’s Resistance Army. Started by three young American film-makers after they hitch hiked to northern Uganda with a camera bought on e-bay, it is today a multi-million dollar enterprise, using innovative social networking and creative communications. From roadies to ‘sit-ins’ and demonstrations, lobby days and lotteries, public challenges and competitions to economic development, infrastructure building and educational work, and interventions in peace talks and diplomatic circles, the Invisible Children are a rich example of storytelling that gives impetus to humanitarian action, including urging youth to think creatively on how to make a difference in their own day to day lives. Arguably, it is the ‘new breed’ of global citizenship and activism that turns the present humanitarian morass on its head. This is not without controversy. It seemingly turns suffering into a commodity, promotes war tourism and reproduces problematic racial narratives of saviours and survivors.
Each week your group will spend time on the Invisible Children.org website and researching the various facets of the initiative on the internet, we will briefly discuss your views and reactions as you learn and connect who is interested in what questions and aspects of investigation. The idea is to identify the different threads and form groups around these, some aspect of the movement (the policy, the fundraising, the humanitarian work, the advocacy) and for each group to take on some aspect of this.
So instead of submitting a written project proposal, we decided to do a video proposal....
Group Project Proposal from Visible People on Vimeo.
Media + Humanitarianism = ?
Sitting at the Boulevard Cafe on campus right, having a team meeting... and capturing the process on video, documenting this journey.
We managed to get an interview with Invisible Children's Director of Media and Communications, Jedidiah, for next week, March 16th! We're all looking forward to it! Drafted a list of possible questions to ask him at our meeting today... we definitely need to narrow the list down a bit. There are so many aspects of Invisible Children's media campaigns and brand that we're interested in unpacking the intentions and impact of.
....and we're on Twitter!
Follow us @visible_people!!!
Hello? Hello? Invisible Children's Silence
The five of us sent an email to Jason, Russell and Jedidiah the other day, asking for a brief interview with them for our research project on Invisible Children's various media tools and campaigns. Jason and Russell are both Invisible Children Co-Founders and Filmmakers, and Jedidiah is Invisible Children's Director of Public & Media Relations.
Test post
I'll put some goodies on after I get back from Chicago this weekend. In the meantime, post away, girls!
