If you’ve ever wanted to see an internet meme take off…here’s your chance. If you’ve ever wanted to get on the ground floor of a global movement that has great potential to do good…here’s your chance. If you’ve ever wanted to see what it takes to harness social media to motivate millions of people to get up off the couch and take action…here’s your chance.<\/p>\n
[vimeo http:\/\/www.vimeo.com\/37119711 w=398&h=224]<\/p>\n
A friend of mine posted a link to this video in facebook yesterday (March 6th) around noon MST. When I started to watch the video I had no idea that it was 30-minutes long…but I was quickly caught up in the story of a madman doing terrible things to children in the interior of Africa. Thirty minutes later I knew several things: 1) this filmmaker knew how to use video effectively to tell a story, and 2) the story was one that would compel anyone who watched to care about this terrible situation. If you read just a few of the many comments on the Vimeo page<\/a> you’ll see people who have been genuinely moved to action.<\/p>\n I shared the link on fb and twitter and began to see others doing the same. When I watched the video yesterday, it had been viewed by several hundred thousand people. As I write this on the morning of March 7th it has been viewed 5.3 million times! I’ve never seen something take off this quickly. This is big folks, and is only going to get bigger.\u00a0A couple of days ago the number of people who knew about Kony was a fraction of those who recognize the names Kobe or Kim Kardashian…but that will change. And that is a good thing.<\/p>\n March 8 Update: As promised, here are links to a critique of Koni2012<\/a> and Invisible Children’s\u00a0rebuttal<\/a>. Remember, as traditional mass media editors and gatekeepers become less important, individual media consumers must become adept at evaluating media messages using a full-range of critical thinking skills. The challenge is to become a critical thinker without becoming overly cynical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you’ve ever wanted to see an internet meme take off…here’s your chance. If you’ve ever wanted to get on the ground floor of a global movement that has great potential to do good…here’s your chance. If you’ve ever wanted to see what it takes to harness social media to motivate millions of people to … <\/p>\n