Viral dissemination has been a feature of the internet almost from the beginning, but the deliberate exploitation of it dates from Independence Day in the US in 1996, when Hotmail was launched by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. It was the first "webmail" system (allowing people to send and receive email using an internet browser) and its makers had the brilliant idea of appending a footer to every message sent stating that it had been sent by Hotmail and inviting the recipient to "get a free Hotmail account" at www.hotmail.com.Viral dissemination received a really powerful boost with the launch of YouTube in 2005. Thereafter, people were able to post striking, amusing or daft videos online and the service made it easy to "share" anything that viewers liked. This is what led to the LOLcat explosion and the astonishing viewing totals for charming videos like Charlie Bit My Finger, which has been watched more than 12 million times since it first appeared in 2007.Viral dissemination was also responsible for making Bruno Ganz, the actor who played Adolf Hitler in Downfall, the 2004 film about the last days of Hitler, into the most famous German actor in the world – though in this case the makers of the film came to regard its online notoriety as a mixed blessing as parodies of one of its climactic scenes started to spread virally across the network.
Miriam Assaad on 10 Mar 12Interesting analysis of the US motives from the Kony intervention
Hussein Khalil on 11 Mar 12Actually, it doesn't necessarily mean "dishonest" at least in the way the campaign developed. Just because the NGO didn't roll out their entire agenda in a video doesn't mean they're hiding anything. The video itself was aimed at a component of their objective in Uganda: Make Kony a household name. Dishonest here is a matter of opinion, in terms of how the campaign construction and evolution (encoding) is done. Calling it a scam is like saying advertisers are trying to steal your money, they don't tell you we want to make profit, but rather you need to consume our product. If you choose to participate and donate, it is your job as an activist to do the necessary research, at least in my opinion. The rest can be chalked up to the debate: should campaigners give its audience all of the information or should they give them enough and have them make a decision (lethargic & informed vs. active & smart). Then we seek to define how much is enough, which gets down to opinion. The bottom line however is over such a short period of time and the quick rise of the deviant opinion is something we should definitely examine. The "hidden" motives are basically the motives that weren't included in the video KONY2012 video. However it fulfilled its purpose as a medium, raise awareness about the cause (itself, but not the NGO's agenda), involve as many people as possible. In the end it comes down to framing the issue. As for Invisible Children as an organization, it has its Vision and Mission Statement set clear on its website. There were very broad headlines concerning their Kony initiative, they offered a step by step plan when major criticism began to surface. They have updated their page accordingly: http://www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html - and cracking down because of their funding of the Ugandan army is a matter of political debate. Either you prefer to arm the Ugandans (past human rights abusers) and have them expel the threat themselves, allow the threat of the L
