Kony video sweeps Internet, but how credible are its makers?

A video calling for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the fugitive leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army militia group in Uganda, swept across the Internet this week attracting a wave of support on Twitter and Facebook. However there has also been a skeptical backlash against Invisible Children, the little-known team of filmmakers based in San Diego who released the video.

The video’s premise is that people in America — and the world beyond — have the power to stop Kony, if only they are willing to spread the word through the power of social media. Called ‘Kony 2012’, the goal is to see Kony captured by the end of this year.

The video features Jason Russell, the co-founder of Invisible Children, and the film’s director. At one point in the film, he asks his son, Gavin, what he thinks should be done about Kony.

“Stop him,” Gavin responds.

Then, in one of the video’s many slick moments, the boy’s words are quickly echoed by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, where Kony is wanted for crimes against humanity.

“Stop him,” Luis Moreno-Ocampo says on camera, “and (that will) solve all the problems.”

Despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant and the deployment last fall of 100 U.S. Special Forces to four Central African countries to help advise in the fight against Kony, few Americans knew until now who he was.

To those 99 percent, Russell poses this challenge: Make Kony and his crimes so “famous” that governments view it as imperative that the mission to capture him succeeds.

Celebrities — and teens — have quickly joined the cause.

“Even if its 10 minutes … Trust me, you NEED to know about this!” tweeted Rhianna.

“This is not a joke. This is serious. TOGETHER we can #MakeAChange and #STOPKRONY – help another kid in need!” Justin Bieber tweeted.

“Have supported with $’s and voice and will not stop,” tweeted Oprah.

Data collected by YouTube show the video is most popular with boys and girls ages 13 to 17, as well as young men ages 18 to 24.

But the video has been heavily criticized for promoting a misunderstanding of the situation - beginning with the fact that Kony is believed to have long since fled Uganda for South Sudan or the Central African Republic. Though his army once numbered in the thousands and sowed fear across northern Uganda, he is now believed to have only a few hundred followers and much of the armed conflict in the area has subsided.

The video has drawn mixed reactions from within Uganda, where many civilians distrust the military and government forces are often accused of committing the same atrocities as Kony’s fighters.

Angelo Izama, a reporter at the Daily Monitor newspaper in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, said the video was misleading. “It is problematic that these children wanted people to know that the war is still going on,” Izama said. “It’s not.”

“You’ve got almost racialist construction embedded in there,” said Izama.

“It’s young white people coming to Africa to save deserving but hapless children from a monster that was created.”

Uganda’s armed forces, which have been hunting the fugitive LRA leader for more than two decades, welcomed the film and its massive viewership, saying it would “help us to expose who Kony is.”

Mashable reported that   Visible Children , a Tumblr dedicated to evaluating the legitimacy of the KONY 2012 campaign, raised some points Wednesday morning which have resurfaced in numerous publications.

“Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited. But it goes way deeper than that.”

You can evaluate Invisible Children’s  2011 budget , which is public online, for yourself: $1,074,273 was allocated to travel and $1,724,993 was allocated to staff compensation.

The Mashable story added that others across the Twittersphere have accused KONY 2012 of promoting ‘slacktivism’ — the idea that sharing, liking or retweeting will solve a problem — across the social web.

In a rebuttal posted on its website, the group acknowledges the video overlooks many nuances but says it sought to explain the conflict “in an easily understandable format.” It called the film a “first entry point.”

“It’s something we can all agree on regardless of your political background,” said Ben Keesey, the group’s 28-year-old chief executive officer. “There are few times where problems are black and white. There’s lots of complicated stuff in the world, but Joseph Kony and what he’s doing is black and white.”

With inputs from Reuters and Associated Press