We started our project focusing in on a documentary that specifically illustrates how facebook changed the world, shedding light on the Ghadafi regime and the protests to get him out of office. Demonstrations were fairly new in Tunisia, where it all began. Their protests began peaceful but the governements soldiers retaliated with violence. Tear gas and gunshots were being fired at the citizens while they fought back with stones and with what ever else they could put their hands on. The Tunisian news programs were not showing any of the conflict. Citizens new the world needed to know what was going on. One of the first young citizens that shot a video on his smart phone gave a visual of cars burning and many throwing stones. He is quoted in the video yelling, "Who is going to let our voice be heard? We're not animals, so why are we being ignored?"
How FaceBook Changed The World:The Arab Spring
We then went on to explore the affects of citizen journalism and how the "Professional Journalists" should begin to view this new branch of journalism also titled, Netizin's which is a citizen of the internet. Ahmed Shihad-Eldin journalist and producer for Huffington Post's new live streaming network, "Huffington Post Live,"spoke of how journalist's should look at the citizen journalist as the breaking news and the professional should write about the facts and push the story. It is not a loss of jobs that professionals should concern themselves with, but instead how to capitalize on the inevitable. Netizin's can better understand the area in which they reside, capturing the most intimate and detailed events as soon as they occur. They have a story and voice that deserves to be heard and not considered a threat.
Citizen Journalism on the Rise
To conclude our project we focused on the rapid effect of the youtube piece, Kony 2012, created by the non-profit organization, Invisible Children. It began with film makers traveling to Africa in 2003 to capture the happenings in the war in Darfur Africa. When a vehicle that they were traveling behind was attacked by a group of young soldiers, all representing the L.R.A or the Lords Resistance Army their focus changed and on October 17th 2012 the film makers released a documentary about the children in Central Uganda that were being forced to become apart of the L.R.A. The story behind the brutalities that occurred to the young men were extensive and gruesome. Young boys age 9 and up were being kidnapped, mutilated if caught trying to escape, being forced to rape kidnapped young girls, and even going back to their homes and killing their parents. The idea of the documentary was to "Make Joseph Kony Famous," in order to stop him. If the travesty caught the worlds attention everyone around the would pitch in to put an end to Kony's regime. The film maker made a promise to a child in the video that he would catch Kony. The viral video was viewed by at least 43 million viewers on youtube in 72 hours and raised over 10 million dollars in the campaign to stop Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA.
Kony 2012 Official Video
Critics accused the film makers and the organization Invisible children of misappropriating funds the year prior and questioned what that meant for the Kony 2012 campaign. According to knowyourmeme.com,
"On March 7th, the “Visible Children” Tumblr[15] was launched with a blog post criticizing the Invisible Children organization’s expenditures using charity dollars. The post received over 21,000 notes in less than two hours.
Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited. But it goes way deeper than that."
Invisible Children responded with a chart of what their goal with the funding would be.
Over all social media has united citizens and journalists around the world to tell a story. Many stories would not have been heard, acted upon, or even fathomed if it werern't for a combination of professional journalists, netizins, facebook, youtube, and over all, the web.
Sources:
Kony 2012 Official Video
Citizen Journalism on the Rise
How FaceBook Changed The World:The Arab Spring
Kony 2012 Facts
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