Children, war and clever media calculation

At first there was just this name that echoed through all my interactive channels: Kony. A new evil Chinese exploitative company or the abbreviation for a particularly cool campaigning tool? Only when the first mainstream media jumped on the social media hype did I also click on this masterfully manipulative work of art, which by the time this issue went to press had been seen by more than three times as many people worldwide as Uganda has inhabitants. 90 million pairs of eyes followed a US filmmaker and self-made development aid worker to the Central African country where the war criminal Joseph Kony, who has been internationally wanted since 2005, and his army of children have been wreaking their bestial havoc for many years. 

Regardless of whether the Hollywoodesque staging of a mass murderer actually achieves its declared goal with his capture, the viral video is already a global success and a benchmark for future campaigns on YouTube (75 million views), Facebook (3 million followers for the NGO responsible, "Invisible Children") and Twitter (top topic for days). Now Joseph Kony, and with him the collectively repressed because almost unbearable topic of "child soldiers", is finally making the headlines that it has long deserved, and in doing so shows "en passant" the moral perversion of our attention economy: the decisive news values of our media system are not child suffering or outrageous crimes against humanity, but emotional closeness and personal concern. 

So far, so banal - especially for media professionals (which also means PR people). Unfortunately, cynicism, like rattling, has long been part of the trade here. It is precisely from this perspective that it seems breathtakingly consistent how the Kony campaign creates that situational relevance that captivates the viewer and keeps them on the edge of their seat for half an hour, which incidentally gives the lie to all prophecies of doom that the attention span on the net is tending towards zero. The main trick is the recurring thematization of the situation in which most viewers find themselves at the moment of reception: They are on Facebook. The solidarity of the online community is therefore dramaturgically placed in front of the solidarity with Kony's victims in such a way that at the end you almost can't help but point out this epochal social media event to your friends and followers - and thus help to spread the core message "Catch Kony!". 

"Kony2012" uses this mechanism of self-reinforcement almost frighteningly perfectly and is an example of how a maximum number of people can be manipulated and mobilized within days with a minimum of information. At the same time, the current division of tasks between traditional and new media becomes clear: first, the echo chamber of social channels is mercilessly emotionalized and effectively sensitized, then this virtual background noise is analysed and criticized in mainstream media. Of course, the Kony campaigners can be accused of political naivety, post-colonial arrogance or mere fundraising. What seems more important to me, however, is that frustration over opportunistic interest politics (in this case the USA) and powerless judicial apparatuses (in this case the World Criminal Court in The Hague) is being transformed into moral motivation. And not only among the interactive people. Angela Merkel's government spokesperson tweeted a few days ago.

"#Kony - DEU has brought the issue to the UN Security Council. We support Afr. union in the fight against these crimes."