Any portmanteau in a storm: Kony and the media lexicon

Something deep inside tells me I should apologise for the pun-tastic title. I silence this inner voice with gusto.

One of many things that irks me about journalism are the buzzwords that writers create to try and essentialise an issue. Here are two portmanteaus that have infiltrated the media lexicon: The first, ‘churnalism’, I can abide by; if I hear or read the second, ‘clicktivism’, I have to excuse myself from present company and gouge my eyes out with a spoon.

What does this have to do with war criminal de jour Joseph Kony? Column inches, I would suggest.

Churnalism first. Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign goes viral, transcends viral, becomes a permanent feature of ones facebook feed, appearing more than misspelt descriptions of peoples dinners. A phenomenon indeed. The media pick up on this and they write of the video’s impact; it is not their responsibility to scrutinise the content, the producers, the history of Uganda. The story is, essentially, ‘people watch something, are moved to care’. As encouraging it is to know that people care, Kony is relatively old news; is a man six years in exile more important than Sudanese elections, a coup in Mali, or Somalia’s unabated civil conflict?

Will it take a video with high production values and a skillfully coordinated PR campaign to make people care? Churnalism, by definition, is the regurgitation of press release material in the media. As important as the message which Kony 2012 communicates is, for it to dominate media discourse on African politics is counter-productive; there is so much more happening that demands our attention.

Attention is not action, however, which brings me onto the abomination of the English language that is clicktivism.*

Clicktivism inhabits facebook and appears to provide the same satisfaction as popping a zit: What does liking a humanitarian cause on a social network have to do with activism? It’s akin to giving a crying, hungry child a fruit pastille; it changes nothing, except perhaps the perception of you held by some of your more ‘gullible’ friends. There is nothing active about clicking, at best the combined power of millions of ‘clicktivists’ can penetrate the media, which can then influence political approaches to a situation, which results in more humanitarian aid, in the form of finance or food. African governments, Uganda included, have terrible records for hoarding aid money for personal use and restricting the dissemination of food on tribal or economic grounds. This flawed cycle continues irrespective of what you like or watch on the internet.

‘Clicktivism’ is not active, therefore it is anathema. Furthermore, because people think that they’ve done something, they then shy away from real activism (read: Actually Doing Something) and the movement, as a whole, is weakened. The concept of social ‘awereness’ to me is a part of the political lexicon: You know something is going on, you can talk about it, form an opinion. Clicktivism is the very base notion of awareness.

Churnalism expands awareness, which is only the beginning of contribution. Clicktivism implies that it is also the end… not so.

*It doesn’t even work as a portmanteau, the assonance isn’t consistent!

Think on this:

Jon Lee Anderson, the New Yorker

Vice Magazine

Ugandan Oil

Clicktivism is the devil

War Porn: Exporting Conflict and Importing Violence

By way of a disclaimer, no hyperlinks in this article go directly to any potentially offensive websites. The site I used for research, http://www.gotwarporn.com, has since gone down.

The culture of the Western world is in flux, defined by an indistinct, insignificant year on a meaningless timeline. Since the Second World War the U.S. have been exporting their culture across the world, offering democracy with one hand, a pointing a gun with the other. In return the rest of the globe can expect to concede exclusivity of their identity, their resources and their politics; they can expect their culture and traditions to be undermined or lost; their people divided by changing values to the extreme where they turn upon one another. Neo-imperialism threatens any nation state under the premise of protectionism, resource war or ideological difference.

Consumer culture in the West holds up a cracked mirror to its distorted values and manufactures to normalise. Computer games don’t beget violence, quite the opposite in fact, they exist as an outlet to the violence which is no longer seeping through the cracks of society, but growing like fungus on the walls. Some seek to sanitise this outlet for aggression which is akin to war censorship; violence is a part of our humanity and if we seek to suppress it, it will merely foment elsewhere. The technological advances in entertainment are matched by the technologies of the battlefield; soldiers are all equipped with cameras, on the sights of their rifles or for personal purposes.

Barrack Obama’s attempted censorship of images proving Osama Bin Laden’s death provoked a powerful reaction in the U.S. The media demanded proof of Bin Laden’s slaying, apparently representing the public interest, or at least purporting to, and simultaneously suggesting and reinforcing the idea that any proof were needed. Is the head of any one man so significant that a government would deliberately deceive millions of people to bolster its own credibility?  Perhaps U.S. citizens instinctively distrust their political paragons, although there is no clamour for proof when policy changes or spending cuts are politically justified to them.

The difference is violence, gore, action, vengeance, suffering. And this is the American cultural landscape. Bin Laden was public enemy number one, but the culture of hysteria and misunderstanding (or refusal to contemplate understanding) that has been cultivated in the U.S. makes every native Iraqi or Afghan a potential trophy; death is proof of the righteousness of U.S. neo-imperialism, and a cause for celebration.

Celebrating victory could be seen as a global culture: It is an opportunity to affirm the strengths of our tribe and our cause, to mock and belittle the defeated, and to do both with the reckless abandon that comes with the knowledge that, for now, the worst is over and our responsibilities are diminished. Under psychological duress in a conflict environment where there is no real victory, only political exclamation or mass extraction from the battlefield, the end of every fire-fight carries the weight of increased significance. This is indefinite war waged abroad by an invading force, it is not the protection of the homefront, or a legitimate cultural threat; it is justified by the knowledge that you are in a land which is ruled and lived in alike by non-people.

When violence becomes the measure of success for cultural superiority, it is no surprise that a phenomenon such as War Porn would be born. It is the grotesque fetish of murder, normalised by meaningless, endless conflict and the distorted notion of what victory is. It is symptomatic of the 21^st century where there is no empathy for others and a kill is considered a trophy. The military is a violent community propelled by an oppositional ideology; with no real barometer of success or victory, no positive affirmation of their cause, allowing these images and videos have become the true spoils of war.

I write this blog with unequivocal condemnation, but also to pose a question: How could mainstream media report this deplorable culture without further desensitising its audience to violence and normalising the existence of such behaviour? Conversely, is it appropriate that such horrific truths are censored? Our media, like our military, are more tech-savvy than ever, and images of violence move units and make money, unless they directly harm the coffers of the media organisation.

Constructing copy around images may create a consumer atmosphere of the medium dominating the message; not for everybody, but many who scan the media don’t necessarily absorb, analyse and criticise. Especially online, news is a passive activity, and repulsive images are temporary; it is an easy choice to look away. but a choice nonetheless.

War porn is an issue that needs to be addressed on a governmental level, not widely condemned by prominent political figures when a grotesque image or video is leaked. Political manufacturing of the news agenda ensures that something so damaging to U.S. credibility is swiftly removed from the headlines at home. Global media ensures that those in occupied countries who may see the positive aspects of U.S. intervention quickly change their outlook, and perhaps even their attitudes toward violence. Propaganda has told us that the U.S. aim to win hearts and minds abroad but these actions demonstrate an absence of either to a sickening degree.

I cannot recommend strongly enough this article by David Swanson: It is shocking, but at the same time thoughtful and sensitive to its subject.