A New Age

BBC News makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all images broadcast. However, very occasionally mistakes do happen. Unfortunately an incorrect logo was used during a segment on last week's News at One bulletin and we apologise to viewers for the mistake. 

But Youtube, of course, had the video uploaded for those who missed out on the actual broadcast.
This video, which was only released a week ago, currently has over 374,000 views. The mistake made by BBC grabbed the attention of many people around the world. But the mistake by BBC turned out to be a brilliant piece of advertising for the makers of Halo, which made many people wonder if advertising was in fact the original intention.

This type of video is known as a viral video, which when uploaded spreads from person to person like a virus. Viral videos can be an extremely effective marketing tool because it can reach millions of people easily and is free to upload.

Kony 2012 was uploaded on youtube on March 5, 2012 about the head of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan guerrilla group and alleged that he kidnapped children and forced them to become soldiers. This video got a staggering ninety million views.
This video got people thinking and other videos demanding action against Kony and got NGOs rethinking their awareness programs.

Canadian celebrity Justin Bieber, among other celebrities, rose to fame after record producers saw videos of him singing on the popular site youtube. There are now sites which track viral videos, listing them by number of views.

Viral videos are a very effective way of marketing available at the moment.. Even news events captured by a simple camera phone can be uploaded on to the internet which could be classified as citizen journalism.

Some "popular blogs" which sprung up are Coup four and a half, Intelligentsiya, Fiji today, Discombobulated bubu and Fiji democracy now among others. These blogs paste stories from mainstream sources then give their opinion on them, anonymously of course. Most of these blogs urge the people of Fiji to take action against the army via riots, protests and other forms of violence.

Discombobulated bubu, for example, posts things like Fiji's MR has been and Wrapped up and doomed which are not only opinion based hate posts but also promote racism at the highest level. These blogs claim to provide the real news but rather post their opinions without balance or verification.

Blogs also seem to be losing their "popularity" from 2009. In 2007 Fiji had over 800,000 people living here. These blogs don't even get comments which reach three figures let alone come close to that number.

As you can see from the above figure, both Discombobulated bubu and Intelligentsiya have zero comments and this goes for most of their recent posts. People seem to be reverting back to the mainstream media despite the censorship.

The most popular blog Coup four and a half is the only blog with regular comments on its posts, however they usually fail to reach triple digits. Out of the 800, 000 plus people in Fiji, very few actually partake in the blogs, this is not including people who post comments with multiple accounts, hide IP addresses and live overseas with knowledge of what is happening in Fiji. Despite various pleas on these blogs for action, majority of the population of Fiji seem content with simply going about their business.

The latest article on Coup four and a half is about Justice Daniel Gounder heading to Sydney. It makes a lot of allegations against Goundar and other judges.

Officially, he is on study leave but reliable insiders say he fell foul of the regime after the illegal PM's office recieved two sworn affidavits from FICAC offers saying he was constantly in touch with FICAC prosecutor, George Langman, and FICAC consultant, Nazhat Shameem.

Coup four and a half always has "sources' and make allegations. But the fact that they were made originally against the regime and repeatedly calls them illegal makes them a biased source of information. There is no way of verifying any of these sources and no balance at all as justice Goudar was never once interview for his say by coup four and a half.

Another huge problem with blogs like these is that they are run anonymously which means nobody can really take them seriously unless they post hard evidence which they have so far failed to do. Did great civil rights freedom activists like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi hide behind anonymity? Their legacy speaks for itself, they were not cowards afraid of punishment, making accusation behind the veil of anonymity.

Blogs in fact can be very useful if done correctly. Many blogs in the USA and other countries have uncovered real stories of corruption. Most people in those countries also had access to the internet where as in Fiji only a minority of the population do so. It will be a long time before blogs in Fiji get what it takes to compete with the mainstream media.