Communication, Culture, and Human Rights in Africa by Musa Bala A.;Domatob Jerry Komia; & Jerry Komia Domatob

Author:Musa, Bala A.;Domatob, Jerry Komia; & Jerry Komia Domatob
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UPA
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART IV

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE

Chapter 9

Media Activism, Youth Culture and Human Rights Campaigns for the MTV Generation

Brian Ekdale

Introduction

On April 28, 2007, 68,000 people gathered in 15 cities across the United States. Most of them were young; most of them white. Participants wore white shirts with red “X’s” on them, played guitars, ate saltines, and posed over an hour for group pictures (Ladd, 2007). When they had finished posing, but before they danced in an enormous conga line, they wrote thousands of letters to U.S. senators and the Ugandan government, urging them to put an end to the violence in northern Uganda. All this happened at the “Displace Me” event organized by Invisible Children, Inc., a non-profit organization seeking to end the Ugandan civil war. What happened that day just might be the new face of global youth activism.

Invisible Children began in 2003 with the production of an hour-long documentary but has since evolved into a sizeable media-advocacy campaign that has been able to reach and enlist a substantial number of young supporters. This chapter examines Invisible Children as a case study for understanding what this new kind of media and youth advocacy organization might mean for the larger human rights movement. It opens with a brief discussion of the historical and political context for the conflict in northern Uganda, followed by a close examination of the initial documentary project that inspired the larger organization. After analyzing the documentary, the chapter will explore the organization’s use of multiple forms of media and how its later media products reject some of the initial documentary’s weaknesses while inheriting others. Finally, it will describe how Invisible Children has been effective at engaging youth through effective branding, member participation and feedback mechanisms. The emergence of Invisible Children as a successful media-based, youth-driven advocacy organization may provide a glimpse into the future of human rights campaigns in Africa. The following study is based on a historical retelling of the conflict in northern Uganda, textual analysis of the Invisible Children’s multimedia products and insights provided by news coverage of the organization.

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