KONY 2012

One example of political activism in social media could be KONY 2012. As you all may know, KONY 2012 started with a movie made by Invisible Children providing the message 'stop Kony'. The purpose of the film was to make Ugandan cult and militia leader Joseph Kony known all over the world in order to get him arrested. The movie claims that Joseph Kony used children as soldiers and brainwashed them. The 'KONY 2012' movie was spread all over the internet; it was put on youtube and then shared to Facebook. On Facebook it was then shared several times, people posted it to their wall, there were hundreds of Facebook pages and happenings with demonstrations in almost every country of the world. There were even Facebook events with the purpose of putting up posters in every corner of every city. It swept the entire world in less than 24 hours. 

As of today, the movie has 93 million (!!) viewers, and the number is still increasing. 
This case in an example of using the internet to make a statement, and as we can see in this case, we have the possibility with the internet to make a statement that can reach the whole world. 

Another aspect of it is though that you have to be critical (which is also one of the 10 guidelines) with what you see on the internet. Did they just want to make money on the video? Do we have proof that this has really happened? 
When watching the movie, is is very easy to make a statement saying 'stop kony' because the video is so well-made with exactly the right music and the right pictures. Another aspect is that we in our group had never heard of it, for example in the news, before it suddenly exploded on Facebook which makes it untrustworthy. 
Despite that, if the video is real, then it is a good thing that we can use the internet to draw attention to a very serious issue.