This is a "living" project put together by five students from University of British Columbia as a part of this seminar on the Politics of Humanitarianism.
This project is a critique on the organization Invisible Children and its various uses of media to advocate for their ongoing work in northern Uganda and more recently the Congo.
Our group will be focusing on Media and Representation vis-à-vis Invisible Children. We've divided our topic into five major pillars.
- IC's social media
- IC's movies
- IC and news media
- IC's website and campaigns
- “People” media
We hope to tackle each of these using the same forms of media that Invisible Children uses.
We will be adding continuously to this site during the next 4 weeks to document our exploration of the organization. We welcome your participation!
The assignment is described as follows:
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 eBay, 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.
