How looking pretty turned out not to be enough to solve a humanitarian issue

In 2014 American non-profit organization Invisible Children (IC) shared a 28-minute YouTube video that quickly went viral. The video focused on stopping the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda and was called after the LRA’s leader, Joseph Kony. ‘Kony 2012’ became the most viral video in history at that time, but as much appraisal as it received in the first instance, within a matter of days the success of this PR campaign backfired. In their article, Madden, Janoske and Briones (2015) used IC’s organizational crisis to explore the concept of social media activism. Their study demonstrates how social media can play a key role in an awareness raising campaign, but is also capable of severely threatening the reputation and legitimacy of an organization.

What probably led to the initial success of ‘Kony 2012’ was its narrative. The very slick looking video appealed to a broad, young, global audience and opened with a message about the positive sides of globalization rather than the humanitarian crisis ends up describing.  Furthermore, the organization cleverly called upon celebrities to share the matter. When Oprah Winfrey tweeted about the film to her 10 million followers, the view count skyrocketed within days from 66.000 to 9 million.

However, by using social media and trying to appeal as much as possible to people’s hearts and emotions rather than their rationale, IC also failed to express the complexities of this international humanitarian issue. Among others, they failed to criticize the Ugandan government, referred to Kony and the LRA operating in Uganda even though both had not been seen there for more than five years, and exaggerated the size of the LRA severely. Secondly, IC was not transparent about its received donations and thereby gave critics plenty of opportunity to accuse them of being dishonest and unclear. Especially when receiving donations from governments and private individuals, an NGO should want to inform people that the money received is treated as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Most importantly though, as one critic summed up: ‘’The LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds, and while it is still causing immense suffering, it is unclear how millions of well-meaning but misinformed people are going to help deal with the more complicated reality.’’ In the end, the ‘Kony 2012’ campaign was mostly known for its organizational crisis than the humanitarian one it was supposed to address. That was a pity for the idealistic hipsters that seemingly had good intentions, but at the same time ‘bad public relations’ is not just what led to this. Being an expert at anything includes acknowledging your limitations, such as not being fully aware of a specific situation.

It is understandable that a Public Relations professional would want to find a middle road in terms of communicating a message as clearly as possible whilst not getting lost in every complicated detail, but IC could have at least acknowledged that limitation and now clearly did not. 

Jeanette van Eijk studied Public Administration and International Public Policy at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, following which she worked as a Public Affairs professional for several years in The Hague and Brussels. In February 2016 she enrolled in the in the Corporate Communications Master's programme at the University of Amsterdam.