The Politics of Portrayal in Violent Conflict: The Case of the Kony 2012 Campaign

Abstract

A global discourse on cosmopolitan humanism can become tragically disconnected from how it plays out locally. By analyzing Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign, this article examines how and why the ‘‘new war’’ discourse presented in Kony 2012 does not correspond to how an array of local actors frame the violence that took place in Uganda. It also highlights how the Kony 2012 narrative and the interventions it advocates are translating into ‘‘perverse consequences’’: a militarization of the central African region and a decline in awareness and in funding for more complex security issues on the ground. Finally, insight is provided into why the development of cosmopolitan norms and laws favors strong states and institutions, while civilians on the receiving end of ‘‘humanitarian interventions’’ lack the power to define what rights should be protected, by whom and how, and have no way of holding the intervening ‘‘humanitarian’’ actors accountable for their actions.