Over the course of 11 days, between March 5 and this morning, the “Kony 2012” video had been viewed approximately 80 million times and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Invisible Children, an advocacy group working to promote peace in Central Africa and, more specifically, to stop the use of child soldiers by African warlord Joseph Kony.
In addition to educating a new generation about Kony’s war and related issues, the video and its success offer lessons for others that seek to advance their cause via social media. One of those lessons is summarized in an article today in The New York Times:
… Invisible Children also showed a rare willingness to engage with people on social media, including when the talk turned critical.
“Most nonprofits literally duck when this happens,” said Lucy Bernholz, a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. “That’s the worst thing you can do — set a conversation alight and then leave the room.”
She compared a video posted on Tuesday in which Ben Keesey, the chief executive of Invisible Children, responded to criticism leveled at his group to one from Nancy G. Brinker, the head of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, which sought to stanch a flood of criticism last month after it announced that it was pulling money from Planned Parenthood.
“It was as if she had not listened — it never mentions the issues that people were upset about,” Ms. Bernholz said. “With Kony, it addresses the criticisms one by one.” Not everyone will be convinced, she said, but responding to criticism builds trust and support among a more media-savvy generation.
This is an excellent example of what persuasion scholars refer to as a two-sided message, i.e., a message that acknowledges not only the position of the persuader but also the position of the persuader’s opponents. (In contrast, a one-sided message includes only the persuader’s position.) There is widespread agreement in the academic literature “that two-sided messages influence attitudes more than one-sided messages, provided one very important condition is met: the [two-sided] message refutes opposition arguments” (Perloff, 2010, p. 186).
The willingness of the group Invisible Children to address criticism is also consistent with several of the recurring principles found in the academic and professional literature on the use of social media. One of those principles is that organizations must be prepared to give up some level of control over their message (Russell, 2007; Jenkins, 2009). Another is that social media require enduring participation; i.e., once you open the door to engaging stakeholders through social media, you have to keep on engaging them; you can’t just engage them when it’s convenient for or beneficial to you (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010; Scott, 2010; Solis, 2011; Solis & Breakenridge, 2009).
References
Jenkins, H. (2009, February 20). If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead (part five): Communities of users [Web log post]. Retrieved from: http://henryjenkins.org/2009/02/if_it_doesnt_spread_its_dead_p_4.html
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59-68.
Perloff, R. (2010). Dynamics of persuasion: Communication and attitudes in the 21st century (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Russell, K. M. (2007). Using weblogs in public relations education. Teaching Public Relations Monographs (73). Retrieved from: http://www.aejmc.net/PR/73MillerRussell.pdf
Scott, D.M. (2010). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing, and online media to reach buyers directly (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Solis, B. (2011). Engage: The complete guide for brands and businesses to build, cultivate, and measure success in the new Web; revised and updated. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Solis, B., & Breakenridge, D. (2009). Putting the public back in public relations: How social media is reinventing the aging business of PR. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press.
