Saturday 24 March 2012

Kony - The plot thickens...


Anti-Kony campaign in turmoil after filmmaker's breakdown

By Mary Slosson, ReutersMarch 23, 2012

Jason Russell, co-founder of non-profit Invisible Children and director of "Kony 2012" viral video campaign, poses in New York, March 9, 2012. The director of a viral video that calls for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the fugitive rebel leader of Lord's Resistance Army militia group in Uganda, agreed on Friday with skeptics who have called the film oversimplified, saying it was deliberately made that way.

Photograph by: Brendan McDermid , Reuters

LOS ANGELES, March 23 (Reuters) - The public meltdown of the man behind the viral “Kony 2012” video has thrown his campaign into turmoil even as the film succeeded in turning the world’s attention to capturing an elusive and brutal Ugandan warlord.

Jason Russell, whose 30-minute video sensation shone a spotlight on Joseph Kony’s use of child soldiers in Uganda, was taken by police to a hospital in California last week after suffering what doctors described as a brief psychotic breakdown.

Videos posted online showed him pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, naked, in broad daylight, in an incident certain to raise questions over the viability of Russell’s Invisible Children group.

“You always hear people say, ’I’m so stressed out, I’m about to go crazy,”’ said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “Still, the story of all this happening and then he literally is wigging out is very odd.”

He said the episode could serve to divert attention from the warlord to Russell. “Now whenever you see a Kony story, it’s about the guy, not Kony.”

Kony, accused of terrorizing northern Uganda for two decades, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. He is accused of abducting children to use as fighters and sex slaves and is said to like hacking off limbs.

Russell’s wife, Danica, has said her husband would remain under hospital care for a number of weeks, and might not be able to return fully to his work at Invisible Children for months.

In downtown San Diego, Invisible Children’s office has been locked up.

Russell’s Invisible Children co-founders, Laren Poole and Bobby Bailey, declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed, as did the organization’s CEO, Ben Keesey.

Keesey has attributed Russell’s breakdown to the severe emotional toll of the previous two weeks in which the Kony video went viral. Even as the video drew attention to the warlord, it sparked criticism over what some called its misleading portrayal of current events in Uganda.

A spokeswoman would not say how or if Invisible Children planned to proceed with a planned April 20 day of action, in which viewers of the video were asked to paper their homes, lawns and cities with Kony posters to turn him into a household name.

RENEWED EFFORTS TO HUNT KONY

Analysts said the fate of the group may be largely irrelevant because it had already served the purpose of persuading millions to care, and policy decisions were taking shape.

“It’s rare that we have literally millions of Americans calling for more engagement in Africa,” Senator Chris Coons, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on African Affairs, told Reuters in an interview, noting his subcommittee normally received far less attention than it had since the “Kony 2012” video was released.

“I was both amused, pleased and proud that all three of my kids asked me what I was doing to stop Joseph Kony,” Coons said.

Attempts by regional forces and foreign troops to corner the fugitive warlord have so far failed. But on Friday, the African Union said it would launch a 5,000-strong force in South Sudan to hunt him.

The African Union move is in addition to 100 U.S. military advisers President Barack Obama sent to the region last year to help Ugandan forces track Kony down.

Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army is a shadow of its former self, numbering about 250 members, according to a December 2011 report published by the Social Science Research Council.

Some 200 of them are with Kony in the Central African Republic, and 50 others are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the report said.

The video Russell directed, interspersing shots of his own young son with those of suffering Ugandan children, depicts children walking into the city center of the Uganda city of Gulu at night to avoid capture.

But active violence like that has not been seen in northern Uganda in seven or eight years, according to Laura Seay, a professor at Morehouse College, who studies conflict and community in central Africa.

“LRA victims are depicted as absolutely helpless,” Seay said, characterizing the portrayal as neo-colonial and saying the film may have mischaracterized the nature of Gulu, where the number of children taking nightly refuge dwindled after a truce between government forces and the LRA in 2006.

“You have coffee shops and pizza places in Gulu. It’s absolutely peaceful,” she said.

Seay suggested that those whose interest in the region were piqued by the Invisible Children campaign turn their attention next to more active warlords in the region such as Bosco Ntaganda, nicknamed “The Terminator,” and also wanted by the ICC for war crimes.

Ntaganda, a Rwandan operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is accused of conscripting child soldiers under age 15 to carry arms and fight in open conflict.

“He walks freely,” Seay said. “I know where he eats dinner every night.”

© Copyright (c) Reuters


Reflections


1.       What is the link to Crisis Management?

The story of Invisible Children and their Kony2012 campaign has unfolded and taken a bizarre turn. It seems that Jason Russell, one of the co-founders and the narrator of the Kony2012 video has had a very public psychotic breakdown. Russell ran through the streets of San Diego naked and was later arrested by police for lewd behaviour. This has put his organization Invisible Children in crisis. Their head office in San Diego has been shut down and their campaign has been tainted by this event. Their supporters are now unsure of what they should do on April 20th, which the video had marked as a day of action by putting posters of Kony up all over the world in order to make more people aware of the warlord and his crimes against humanity.



2.       What stage of Crisis Management does the system appear to be at? 


The organization Invisible Children is now in a full blown crisis. This is because their head offices in San Diego have been closed since this incident. This incident has directly affected the organization’s business continuity and has adversely affected the services they provide to their primary stakeholders because their campaign and the organization are now under further scrutiny and have lost credibility and the trust of the public. The speed at which news travels through social media has further amplified this crisis. Videos of Russell screaming profanities and running through the streets of San Diego have been shared through social media and traditional media outlets. Since the organization’s video campaign (Kony 2012) went viral through social media, this is the same medium being used by the public to share the crisis that the organization is going through now.



 3.       How well does the system appear to be handling the situation? 


The Invisible Children is not handling this situation well. They have refused to make any statements about this event to the media and have not responded through social media or through their blog on the Invisible Children website. Before this particular crisis, the organization had been responding to all the criticisms of them and their campaign through their blog but has not responded to this event through that medium either. Jason Russell’s wife is the only one that has made a statement to the media but that is a personal response. The organization needs to have a spokesperson that can respond to this event and this crisis. This spokesperson should be someone that had been prepared beforehand and who had addressed the previous para-crisis of criticisms in the media. This spokesperson should also be a subject matter expert on the organization, its finances and the health of the founder and what lead to his breakdown. Lastly, this spokesperson should address the public and their supporters’ concerns about the business continuity of the Invisible Children and the “action day” that is planned for April 20th of this year.


Because of the peculiarity of this event, the media has picked up on the story and is using it to justify the criticism of the campaign that was brought to light when the video first went viral. This also seems to justify their critiques of the organization and the intentions of the founders.  


4.       What level of crisis preparedness does the system appear to have?  


The organization did not seem very prepared for this crisis at all. They should have seen that Russell was “overworked and overstressed” and told him to take a break before he had his psychotic breakdown and ran through the streets of San Diego naked. If his breakdown was caused by all the criticism that his organization or campaign had attracted, the organization should have been prepared for this as this criticism came about in less than a day after the video went viral. Furthermore, the organization should have learned from the para-crisis that had started with the criticisms and been better prepared for this one. They should have made a public statement about the incident and posted it on social media.


5.       What personal reactions/feelings does the description trigger in you?


Although this event taking place is very sad because Russell seems to have good intentions and couldn’t cope with the public pressure and sudden limelight, I am not surprised that the organization went through some sort of crisis so early after they gained notoriety. As mentioned in my last blog post, the organization should have seen the criticisms as a para-crisis and should have prepared for an actual crisis by having a crisis management team and spokesperson. It is not likely that this scenario would have been thought of when they did their crisis planning, but they could have at least had some sort of crisis communication when it did occur. Invisible Children spends almost 30% of its funding on advocacy and campaigning. This should have alerted them to the fact that their primary and secondary stakeholders would be affected by the type of media coverage that their organization received. This is why they should have responded to this crisis right away and not refused to comment on it.  


6.       What advice would you offer to those involved? 


I would tell the Board, CEO and co-founders of the Invisible Children organization to put together a crisis management team and prepare a plan to deal with this and other possible crisis that could happen. Next, I would tell them to immediately draft a crisis communication plan and implement it through their own blog on their website, social media and traditional media. Finally, I would tell them to monitor other signs of crisis and ensure that they address these early, in the pre-crisis phase so that an event like this does not catch them off guard again.

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