Jason Russel’s purpose of the Kony 2012 YouTube video is to increase the American public’s awareness about Joseph Kony and his crimes in Uganda, Africa because he feels that what Joseph Kony is doing is wrong and he wants to change that. He tries to gain support for his cause by showing the audience a video clip from a trip to Africa when he is taking to his African friend Jacob and Jacob begins to cry when he thinks about his brother who had died by the Lord’s Resistance Army, the organization that Kony leads. By using the natural sympathy of human nature, he puts other people in Jacob’s shoes so they are obligated to consider what it would be like if they were in Jacob’s place. Jason really grabs hold of the audience’s attention by giving them facts like the incredible numbers of the people Kony and the L.R.A. have displaced and how they capture children in the middle of the night and force them to kill their own parents. The author starts to encourage support when he describes the event that will be the big push to wake up the country and ultimately the world to the horrors of Kony’s crimes against Africa. He shows images of young people and adults showing support for the cause to stop Kony to encourage other young people that his goal is attainable and anyone can do it. The author stated his reasons to stop Kony in an effective way and he accomplished his goal in raising the American public’s awareness to put an end to the terror reign of Joseph Kony.
I watched the Kony 2012 video created by Jason Russell about a man named Joseph Kony who has committed horrifying crimes in Uganda, Africa. Earlier this year my friend told me about the video but i never watched it. The more I heard about it, the more I wanted to know what it was about and who this “Kony” was. The thing that stood out to me the most was that over the twenty-six years that Kony has been abducting children and burning villages in Uganda, nobody has done very much about it. It strikes me as more of an urgent thing that needs to be stopped as soon as it possibly can rather than something that could just be put off until something really really bad develops in it. It’s common that nobody does anything about a situation until it affects them and by that time, it’s too late to do anything. I think this is the author’s purpose, to get people to open their eyes and help with his cause before it becomes irreversible. Another problem that stood out to me was that Kony isn’t fighting for any specific cause, he’s fighting so that he has power for himself. Personally, this makes me feel like something is seriously wrong with this man because he pretty much has no reason to continue what he is doing. The viewer cannot directly relate to the people who are affected by Joseph Kony but they could imagine what it would be like if a sibling was killed or if they were forced to kill their parents. I feel like Jason Russell did an adequate job of getting his point across that Joseph Kony needs to be stopped however, I feel that the video was mainly aimed at a young audience and that more people should have been the aim of the video.
