Awareness Isn't Action For Kony 2012 (From http://blogs.abc.net.au)

source

by Joel Rheinberger

So what happened to the 88 million people who viewed Invisible Children's Kony 2012 video?

Weren't they supposed to be out on the weekend, plastering posters all over town?

It seems that they looked at the video, shared it on Facebook and Twitter, declared their support for the cause... and then thought better of it.

Some may say it's the inherent nature of 'clicktivism' - sending a link is easy, while arranging an evening of actual social activism is quite difficult.

But Adam Ferrier from Naked Communication disagrees.

"I think people are getting involved in more causes, more than ever.  People are becoming more active, more social, more responsible for the planet we live in."

"I think what we're seeing here was people made a pledge to a cause with too many holes in it for them to support."

Though undoubtedly powerful, the original video seems to contain some errors.  And the organisers themelves have had some high profile problems, which undoubtedly made some of their audience back away.

But I think that the central problem with the campaign is more fundamental - it was successful.

The video was designed to raise awareness of Josephe Kony, and by a month later, virtually every media consumer in Australia knew who he was.

Job done.  Awareness raised.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a better example of awareness-raising.

So even for a firm believer, what was the point in putting up posters now?

Perhaps it's time that "raising awareness" was only the first step in such campaigns.  There should be a second step, where we actually do something.