Blog Post 3

I think the most interesting subject for me that we talked about this week was KONY 2012 and clicktivism as a form of social activism. The thing that most struck me was how accurate my personal experience with the KONY movement was to the description of clicktivism and attention-driven activism. The readings explained how these types of movements can gain support and grow awareness for a cause, but usually will fail in spurring real activism and action from its followers. This is exactly what happened with my experience of the KONY movement. When the video first came out, everyone around me including myself became really excited about it, and we even went as far as to create posters and Facebook groups. However, as most clicktivist campaigns do, the excitement burnt out after a few days. Although the people in my school had planned to go out on the date the video provided, the excitement surrounding the movement had died down by then and no one that I knew actually went out that night. I remember driving around the day after looking to see if anyone had put up posters, and I don’t think I saw a single poster around my town. Looking back now, it is so interesting to me to be learning about the tactics that Jason Russell used to create his movement, and how those tactics eventually failed him and led to his downfall.