elected official (and current CEU Department of Public Policy student) Steve Butterfield will walk us through the current campaign cycle. Erin Jenne and Levi Littvay, and former U.S. Is that all there is to it, or can we find order in chaos? Drawing on experience gained from nearly 12 years of working in American domestic politics, CEU professors Dr. To an outside observer, the American elections system can look chaotic, unwieldy, and seems focused on style rather than substance. Given Kony’s recruitment of child soldiers, any military assault would likely result in the death of abducted children.The Department of International Relations and European StudiesĬordially invite you to a panel discussion on Order from Chaos: Unpacking the 2012 American Elections.Despite the campaign arguing that the only entity capable of finding Kony is the Ugandan army, they haven’t been able to do so since 1987.Satellite imagery cannot detect Kony and his followers as they reside in dense jungles.Finding Kony is extremely difficult, as he has fled to areas with little or no state control.Why the campaign’s solutions are misguided: Kony is no longer in Uganda and it is no longer clear that the LRA represents a major threat to stability in the region.Proposed solutions do not involve working with local organizations that aim to rebuilding displaced communities.There are no Africans on the IC board of directors and few in the senior staff.The campaign gives little or no agency to Ugandan organization and predominantly focuses on American awareness and intervention, as opposed to local solutions. IC’s proposed solution of supporting the Ugandan military to seek Kony is questionable given a poor human rights record in northern Uganda.Majority of funding is spent on advocacy, filmmaking and fundraising. Kony 2012 producer Invisible Children (IC) spends less than a third of the money they’ve raised on direct services in northern Uganda and bordering areas.The article outlines important criticism voiced by other journalists and agencies: The article ends with the following thought-provoking question: Will people only engage with simple narratives and solutions or does attention-based advocacy work? Will simplistic framings do more unintentional harm than good? Or is the wave of pushback against the Kony campaign evidence that people are becoming more engaged with complex narratives? However, this would be considerably harder to share. The Kony campaign boils the complicated problem down to a framework of an identifiable individual harming children, and plays into the pre-existing narrative of “ungovernability of Africa, the power of US military and the need to bring hidden conflict to light.” However these oversimplifications have lead to misguided solutions and unintended consequences that is, an increased support for Yoweri Museveni, a dictatorial president who entices widespread violence in Uganda.Ī complicated narrative would involve topics such as the codependence between Museveni and Kony, Uganda’s systematic failure to protect the Acholi community of northern Uganda, community efforts, Women of Kireka efforts, and economic consequences of portraying northern Uganda as a war zone. The video’s simplicity makes it captivating and spreadable. Thus, the audience is asked to join the campaign by being spoken to as five-year-olds. If each of us does our part, Kony will be captured.” The simplified approach becomes obvious by the fact that the narrative is presented through the lens of a father explaining the issue to his five-year-old. Blogger Ethan Zuckerman argues that the campaign has proven so compelling because of its extremely simple narrative: “Kony is a uniquely bad actor, a horrific human being, whose capture will end suffering for the people of Northern Uganda. Kony 2012 crafts a personalized narrative of passion, advocacy and responsibility in the simplest terms in order to reach as many people as possible.
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