In the past few days, a large number of my students have raised intelligent and important questions about Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 film.
As many of my students know, I have conducted field research in the Great Lakes region of Africa for many years. A key component of the research center I direct at the University of California Irvine is the Transformational Media Lab (TML), which studies transformation through direct feedback systems, and transformation through film campaigns and the use of social media (or the mediatization of politics). Invisible Children (IC) is one of several case studies we are conducting. Some of my students have assisted in coding and analyzing data for these projects. For these four reasons I felt I should make a special effort to answer the questions they have been asking. In preparing these answers I have been assisted by TML director Beth Karlin.
TML’s Invisible Children Program Evaluation
First, it is important to describe our IC project. It does not assess the impact IC is having on people in and around Uganda. This is the core mission of IC, but there are other experts doing this evaluation and we have no knowledge of the findings of that research. We are assessing Invisible Children's impacts on the youth that make up the majority of its supporters.
Our project examines the organization's impact on the people who participate in its events, campaigns, and programs – the students, teachers, roadies, volunteers, and others who have been exposed to and involved in Invisible Children. We also seek to understand the impacts of Invisible Children on the organizations and communities they visit during their tours and large-scale events. Finally, we seek to understand if and how films and campaigns of organizations like Invisible Children lead to significant social change.
Our evaluation is based on data collected over the past decade and provided to us by IC. IC has played no role in developing our research methods, coding data or analyzing data. We are not yet in a position to report on our findings, but we expect that we will identify both positive impacts and areas of concern, and that our report will help IC augment its case statement and improve its programming. We also expect that this research will contribute to the broader challenge of understanding the dramatic mediatization of politics that we have witnessed in the past several years.
The idea that films and social media campaigns have impact is often discussed, promoted, and criticized, but it is rarely studied. In a recent article on the importance of evaluation for documentary film campaigns, our TML director Beth Karlin wrote, "It is not unreasonable to assume that such film campaigns, just like any policy or program, have the possibility to influence viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Measuring this impact has become increasingly important, as funders of documentary and issue-based films look to understand the "return on investment" of films in terms of social impact so that they can compare them with other projects, including non-media, direct service projects. "
Source:
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/444 The questions raised by students have been raised by many other people as well, and so I will refer to a variety of sources in responding to them.
IC’s budget
Yesterday in class a student expressed concerns about IC’s budget. This concern has been expressed very clearly by another student at Acadia University, whose comments have received an enormous amount of attention. That student, Grant Oysten, writes well and I will quote him frequently:
"Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal for an issue which arguably needs action and aid, not awareness…."
Source:
http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/ The question is a valid one, but our web research suggests that many of the people who have been critical of IC on this basis are not using the right or enough information. I think a couple of things are essential to consider before one can really make a compelling assessment:
1.How much of the budget is going into management and overhead? I have seen figures ranging from 5% to 25% for non-profit organizations widely considered to be very effective. The amount depends on many factors—where is the non-profit located, how big is it, what does it do, how are these numbers calculated? 10% might be excessive for one non-profit and completely insufficient for another. According to the highly respected organization Charity Navigator, IC’s management and overhead for the fiscal year 2011 was 16.2% of the overall budget and the highest salary paid was $89, 699. It is not clear why this would raise any alarms, since neither figure seems unusual, especially for a group operating in Southern California.
2.How much of the budget is going into programming? According to Charity Navigator, 80.5% of the total budget goes into program expenses and IC receives the highest rating (four stars) for financial performance. The criticism above focuses on funds spent for salaries, travel, transport and film production. But these are all included under programming, and for an organization that is largely about advocacy and awareness campaigns, campaigns that involve traveling around the country to show films at hundreds of schools and other community groups, it is hard to understand the basis for this concern.
Concerns about transparency
The quote above from Grant Oysten continues on to express another issue that has raised concern:
"Charity Navigator rates their [IC’s] accountability 2/4 stars because they lack an external audit committee."
This is a bit misleading. Charity Navigator gives IC full marks on 10/12 criteria used to assess transparency and accountability. On one criterion the assessment is neutral. On another, the assessment is negative.
Here is the relevant text from the Charity Navigator website:
“The presence of an independent governing body is strongly recommended by many industry professionals to allow for full deliberation and diversity of thinking on governance and other organizational matters. Our analysts check the Form 990 to determine if the independent Board members are a voting majority and also at least five in number.
If a charity has less than 5 independent voting members of the board or if the independent members do not constitute a voting majority, then 15 points are deducted from the charity's Accountability and Transparency score."
The IC board has four members. If it adds one more, the additional 15 points would result in it receiving the highest (4 star) rating. So the important issue, which IC has addressed in its own response to critics, is why does it have such a small board? It is not at all obvious, however, that this concern is very relevant, because the transition from two stars to four stars requires a very small adjustment on the part of IC.
IC’s response to its critics:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html Action more important than awareness
Mr. Oysten expresses another concern very well when he writes, "This is far from ideal for an issue which arguably needs action and aid, not awareness…."
This implies that either one does not need awareness to mobilize action and aid, or that awareness is already at a sufficient level. The first seems implausible, and there is an extensive literature on the importance of awareness campaigns—go to Google Scholar and type in “awareness campaigns.” On whether sufficient awareness already exists, it might be useful to look at this New York Times website, with a video on which Rush Limbaugh defends the LRA:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/limbaugh-defends-lords-resistance-army/?ref=lordsresistancearmy Awareness campaign tells a false or misleading story
Prominent awareness campaigns, like Save Darfur and An Inconvenient Truth, are often criticized for simplifying an issue or telling a story in a way that is biased. We might easily add the writings of journalists, the speeches of politicians, the sermons of religious leaders and the lectures of professors to this list. The truth is, the world is a very complex place and as soon as we try to characterize it and tell its stories, we are simplifying things and making choices about what to include and what not to include and some people will disagree with the choices we make.
In this case, an oft-quoted line is pulled from a Foreign Policy opinion piece, as Mr. Oysten does here:
"Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest."
But let’s look at the original source:
"Among the most influential of advocacy groups focusing specifically on the LRA are the Enough project, the Resolve campaign, the Canadian-based group GuluWalk, and the media-oriented group Invisible Children. Older agencies, from Human Rights Watch to World Vision, have also been involved. In their campaigns, such organizations have manipulated facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA's use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony -- a brutal man, to be sure -- as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil. They rarely refer to the Ugandan atrocities or those of Sudan's People's Liberation Army, such as attacks against civilians or looting of civilian homes and businesses, or the complicated regional politics fueling the conflict."
Two things stand out. First, this is a very general criticism of several groups, and it is not clear if they are all being accused of manipulation and exaggeration or not. So we do not really know what the authors are claiming about IC. Second, there are no examples provided to support the assertion. So we do not really know what they mean. Indeed, this criticism has been repeated a lot of times without any evidence to support it. Someone needs to go through the film and show which facts have been manipulated and which numbers have been exaggerated so that we can make an informed decision of the extent to which the story is being told in a way that is false or misleading. We are not experts in this, but we do know that some of the "corrections" to the IC film that have been offered correct mistakes that the film does not make. For example:
"But let's get two things straight: 1) Joseph Kony is not in Uganda and hasn't been for 6 years; 2) the LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds…."
Source:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things Good points, probably true, but where are the contrary claims made in the film?
Western imperialism
This sentiment is nicely expressed by a much cited Yale University professor, Chris Blattman. He writes intelligent blogs about world affairs. His recent comments on KONY 2012 include:
"There are a few famous TV documentaries about Africa, by the likes of Basil Davidson and Ali Mazrui. The funny thing about these shows is that they are less about Africa than they are about Davidson or Mazrui. The new IC film clip feels much the same, laced with more macho bravado. The movie feels like it’s about the filmmakers, and not the cause. There might be something to the argument that American teenagers are more likely to relate to an issue through the eyes of a peer. That’s the argument that was made after the first film. It’s not entirely convincing, especially given the distinctly non-teenage political influence IC now has. The cavalier first film did the trick. Maybe now it’s time to start acting like grownups.
There's also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. It’s often not an accidental choice of words, even if it's unwitting. It hints uncomfortably of the White Man's Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming. The saving attitude pervades too many aid failures, not to mention military interventions. The list is long."
Source:
http://chrisblattman.com/2009/03/04/visible-children/ This really is a challenging issue. Throughout the colonial era and the Cold War, foreigners did a lot of damage throughout Africa, and maybe we should all just stay away from it. Even when outsiders are well-intentioned, they often have little experience and little knowledge of the local context, and can engage in ways that make things worse. But we have a very interdependent world today, and it is not obvious that we can stay away from any part of it--even if we should. Like it or not, our emissions, technologies, cultural products and people get around. Nor is it obvious that there is not a constructive role for us to play in Africa and in many other places. Many economies in Africa are growing well, and many countries are being governed well. There is still a lot of exploitation and damage being done by outsiders, but many Africans understand world affairs and the global economy quite well—they are not helpless or naive at all. In this context, there are opportunities to forge partnerships that make sense all around.
Still, I fully agree that the White Man’s burden mentality is ever present, and we need to challenge this whenever it expresses itself. But the history of IC, as we have come to understand it, suggests a remarkable sensitivity to local information and local claims about what needs to be done. The filmmakers did not start off as “experts” in African affairs, and they do not seem to be making that claim now. They do seem to have grown up, however, in response to a lot of input from Africans in the areas where they have filmed. Is this type of input always reliable? Of course not. But we think that in the case of IC, this input has been significant.
The wrong approach
Anyone who ties the US military to a solution is inviting criticism. And clearly, KONY 2012 does this. The criticism has at least two compelling formulations:
1.The situation is far more complex than IC suggests—capturing Kony will not solve the region’s problems.
2.In any case, the US military is simply the wrong tool for this job.
Insofar as the first point is concerned, this is absolutely true. But let's keep in mind a few things. First, there is no universal agreement at the big picture level. Some people analyze Africa through its colonial history, some through the lens of world capitalism, some through the limits of its natural resources, some through its own modes of corruption and inequality, and so on. All of these views tell us a bit of the story, but fusing them into a single narrative has proven elusive. A thirty minute film will never convey the full complexity of that situation or any situation.
Second, it doesn't seem that IC seeks to express or solve the region's problems. It has a far less ambitious goal than something like Occupy Wall Street does. So perhaps the criticism ought to refocus itself: would capturing Kony improve anything, have no impact at all, or make things worse? This is an important and useful debate, and IC has opened the door on it.
Finally, I do not believe that, these days, any non-profit, any government aid agency or any UN mission aspires to solving the complex problems of a large region of the world. All of these entities make choices about what parts of the whole they should focus on, and how they can make a difference focusing on these parts. Most of them worry about the possibility of negative externalities, and, like IC, cooperate with external groups to evaluate the impacts of their programming.
Regarding the second point, this is a complicated issue itself. I personally do not see military intervention as a viable solution to many world problems. But it is important to remember that military activity today is not quite what it was a couple of decades ago. We use our military a lot for humanitarian operations now. We send Marines around the world to help deal with the damage caused by tsunamis and earthquakes and floods. This is an expensive way to provide help, and they may not be the ideal group to send, but we lack alternatives. For now, if we want to send people into challenging environments, these are who we have, and they have acquired considerable experience distributing food, providing medical services, and so on. In the short term, we are not likely to drop a hundred diplomats into the jungles of Uganda.
One important way in which our military has been used in recent years is in military to military contact programs. Through these programs we can provide and train other militaries to use technologies that we have that they could benefit from. We can also serve as a deterrent and model when we are working with a military unit that might be prone to do things that hurt civilians. Can we be a model because our own behavior is impeccable? Not at all, but that doesn't mean our presence can never be beneficial, or that it can only hurt non-combatants and never protect them.
I am uncomfortable with all forms of military adventurism. But in this particular case, some technical support and pressure to professionalize might be warranted. At least this is what the debate should address.
Conclusion
KONY 2012 is an historic experiment that has already succeeded in raising awareness and stimulating public discussion and deliberation. It is a remarkable example of using social media for political purposes, and it deserves to be debated, interrogated and assessed. My sense of a lot of the criticism to date is that it is often off target, poorly supported and poorly informed. I think it is time to deepen the debate. This means understanding something about the budgets of non-profits before we assess the budget of one non-profit. It means giving examples that clarify our criticism and that support it. It means asking about what the alternatives are. It means explaining why a given approach is wrong, not simply asserting that it is wrong. It means checking sources and contexts.
We are all part of a historic political moment right now—let’s make it a thoughtful, civil and constructive one.
Richard Matthew
Director, Center for Unconventional Security Affairs
