KONY 2012

What techniques does the text use to engage the audience?

This extract about the real life situation of Kony 2012 has got many different types of techniques to engage the audience such as the voice over is a technique that will engage the audience as it is telling the audience and interacting with the audience which is us, by doing this they are using the direct mode of address. Another way it engages the audience is by showing the audience how fast social networking sites get news to travel, this is proved as the Kony 2012 video was put on Facebook first and within a couple of days everyone was talking about it. This creates awareness with the audience as the audience will be able to know how social networking sites are not that secure and information is able to travel over the matter of days.

The extract also shows happy things on YouTube such as the 21 year old women who hears herself for the first time, this shows the audience all the happy and successful things in life but when it shows the bad things about life it creates awareness and helps to make people think about what to do and how to make life better for people in other countries. This also uses the uses and gratification theory, Blumler and Katz’s uses and gratification theory suggests that media users play an active role in choosing and using the media.  Users take an active part in the communication process and are goal oriented in their media use.  The theorists say that a media user seeks out a media source that best fulfils the needs of the user.  Uses and gratifications assume that the user has alternate choices to satisfy their need. They do this by using low key lighting. The low key lighting identifies natural mise en scene.

The extract also uses realism; they have done this whilst the narrator’s son is being born. They have used a camcorder in hospital and this shows realism which the audience can relate to as they use camcorders as well. The text also has close ups in the extract as they show detailed expressions of the people and also it shows the things that are happening in the countries by showing the expressions of the children in the film. This engages the audience as they feel guilty, this is as the audience would not want someone who they care about to go through what the children in the extract go through. This extract shows the zeitgeist which is the spirit of the ages as it shows that nowadays the times are still hard, even though the economy has gotten better there are still hard lives out in the world and the audiences feel guilty once again.

One main thing that catches the audiences eye is the countdown clock which shows the audience that something is about to end and something is going to be destroyed at the end of the countdown, this engages the audiences as they want to know what happen towards the end of the extract. They also have titles in the extract this catches the audience’s attention as the titles are very powerful such as; nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come and then it changes into whose time is now. This makes the audience want to know what they mean and what the detail is.