Case Study: Kony 2012

In 2012, a groundbreaking documentary surrounding the issue in Uganda was released, the purpose being to let the issue be known to the millions of people in the world that Joseph Kony, a leader in Africa, was kidnapping children to use as soldier and forcing them to kill. Jason Russel, a young activist made this known to the world through his controversial documentary about the issue in Africa. He talked about his involvement with a victim of Kony, Jacob, who he had known for almost 10 years. Jacob talked about what he went through, whilst Jacob described in detail the horror of what Joseph Kony was bestowing upon many children like himself, including his brother who was murdered. Jason explained that the issue was simple, that the problem was with the person leading this, Joseph Kony, and if he was arrested that everything would be better for the children in Uganda.

The documentary begins with Jason introducing himself, talking about his family and what he does for a living.We are shown scenes of his wife giving birth to his son Gavin, and how children as young as he is now are being used as soldiers in Africa and couldn't imagine anything like this happen to his child, so why should it happen to another's child? We are then introduced to Jacob, a victim of the child soldiers in Africa, who sadly lost his brother due to the acts ordered by leader Joseph Kony - the centre of the disasters. Jason began to explain what the resolution to this was, by arresting Joseph and restoring the childhoods of the children... But there was one problem, Joseph Kony could not be found. Jason was even contacted by Obama himself, agreeing that what these children suffer is terrible and that he would do what he could to stop it. The documentary ends with Jason explaining what we can do to help to raise awareness of Joseph Kony so he can be found and arrested, which would be done by sticking up posters everywhere around the world so that he is turned into a celebrity and everyone knows about him and what he does.

As the documentary focuses on a social issue that effects children in Africa, the documentary can be classed as a current affairs type of documentary. This is due to the informative content, such as explaining the situation which is going on in Africa, showing us examples of the victims (Jacob) and telling us that we, the world, can help the cause. As well as this, throughout the documentary, Jason Russel puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of our help, as I feel his failures to persuade the government to do something about Joseph Kony had knocked his confidence and began to rely on the public for help. He did this by creating this documentary, who no one knew would become as successful yet controversial as it did in 2012. The effect these types of documentaries have on an audience is that they are made to inspire and awaken the inner activist within the audience. Even if say the audience had never heard of the issue talked about within the documentary, a large portion of the audience would feel as though it would be up to them to make a change - as the presenter or person documenting usually plays on the audience's emotions, especially if the documentary's subject is something sensitive about e.g. children, like in the Kony 2012 documentary.

The way in which the audience's attention is attained throughout the documentary is through content which include emotional scenes, which manipulates the audience into watching to see if there is a resolution or if they can do anything to help. As well as this, Jason uses his own child, Gavin, to example the children who are taken, as he shows the birth of his child and what effect it has on him. The impact this has on the audience is that they see the connection between a child such as Gavin and a child in Africa, showing that this child did not choose to be born into a life such as the one they live and how Gavin is lucky compared to the child soldiers because unlike Gavin, they had no choice as to how they lead their life. We also see actual footage of the conditions in Africa from archive footage, which anchors the situation for the audience showing how serious what happens really is. A victim, who Jason had befriended 10 years prior to the documentary had also been interviewed in this documentary. This examples how much of an effect what happens has on an actual victim and helps the audience understand what happens to the children as the audience are told by someone who has actually experienced it.

The target audience for Kony 2012 I feel is anyone from 13+ (male and female) as the content is not gender specific, the content does not single out a particular person/age of person to watch or help the cause. I also feel this age due to the use of the internet to create the hype about this documentary, which children from the ages of 13 begin to use and would see, as well as people older than this. The interests of this mass audience would be pretty much anything - as there are so many possible audience members with specific interests. One of the main for maybe the older audience members could be an interest in politics, human rights and activism. This documentary would be of interest to them as each of them elements are evident within it. I would say the audience would live worldwide, as again it is not directed at any specific audience and directs to the entire world rather than a specific location. This is with exception of being able to speak English as the documentary is in English with English subtitles.

The way in which Jason Russel made the audience feel strongly about this issue is through his constant emphasis on how the world can help, by putting up posters of Joseph Kony - turning him in to a type of 'celebrity' so the government can realise how much effect he is having on the world as well as being able to find him and arrest him. As well as this, Jason and his organisation created Kony packs which included wrist bands, posters and badges which would spread the word about Joseph Kony so it created even more activism. He also used social media as the major platform for getting the word out - such as facebook, twitter etc. as they are the most famous social media websites which are used by millions upon millions of people in the world, which he realised and saw the opportunity for his documentary to become extremely famous in a short time frame.

My response to this documentary is that although I feel I understand Jason Russel's idea and what he made the documentary for, as it is a very serious issue, I feel a bit played due to the fact that he didn't include vital information about what was happening with the subject in matter. For instance, it turns out the government were actually sending money and supporting Joseph Kony - which I'm sure Jason Russel knew, and that although this does happen in Uganda, that he stressed it to the point where it looked to be a larger spread issue than it actually is. For these reasons, as well as the fact that I didn't really understand where Jason was going with the entire documentary - as a lot of the time he tended  to go off subject, bringing his family into matter and reflecting more of a person view on the documentary rather than giving us more information about Joseph Kony, especially the information which was not mentioned within the documentary.

Overall, I feel although this documentary was intended for good purposes, and obviously was very effective when it came to the audience (due to the amount of coverage it had, appearing even on the news) and Jason coming into this with good intentions, I feel it's rather strange the way in which he approached the documentary, as he focused more on what we can do, rather than the situation in hand - which led me to question why the documentary wasn't released any sooner, as Jason had been working and helping in Uganda for many, many years. I also feel that the documentary was quite deceiving, due to the amount of unclear information within the documentary which could easily be misunderstood by many people, and as this documentary went world-wide, there was a massive surge to help, showing how much people wanted to help. I feel if this documentary shone more of a true light on the situation, made by someone who knew the exact information, that it would have been less criticized when it came to light that most of the information was exaggerated. Saying this, I do back up my point when saying Kony 2012 was a very effective documentary and can see why there was a lot of hysteria when it was released, as it gave people hope and made many believe it began with them to help the children in Uganda.