The documentary involved the participation of my Journalism students as part of a broadcast and digital journalism module which I teach in Year 2 of the BSc Journalism and BSc Communication Studies programmes. I produced the final cut with the assistance of my lab officer Manav Ramsokul.

Many thanks to IOM for this interesting opportunity, to all the persons who agreeed to speak on camera and to the Journalism students for their participation!

Introduction

A political campaign is a set of political activities that people carry out over a period of time (in order to achieve something such as social or political change) which seeks to influence the decision-making process of people within a specific group.

“In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, wherein representatives are chosen or referendums are decided. In modern politics, the most high-profile political campaigns are focused on candidates for head of state of government, often a President or Prime Minister.”
– Definitions.net

Digital campaigns have become prominent. With the introduction of new media, political campaign strategies of political parties, candidates and political organizations have faced a wave of changes. The new media has been able to reshape election media coverage and influence voter engagement. With the introduction of new media, we have been able to witness 6 types of Ads.

Types Of Ads

Ad type #1 Introduction
These types of ads are expected from the political campaigns right from the beginning of the race. As the name itself suggests, this ad is like an introductory ad where the candidate will describe his or her background qualifications as well as the reasons for running for the elections. The candidate in this ad becomes the main subject.

Ad type #2 Endorsements
“An endorsement video is the hallmark of any campaign that is trying to identify and belong to a larger party or group of political actors.”

Ad type #3 Positive
In this type of ad, the candidate will be seen addressing an issue in the society or the district. They will be talking about their issue positions or background and it is mainly in front of an environment typical of their district.

Ad type #4 Negative
(Source: Future Mauritius on Facebook)
In this type of ads, negative light is shed on the campaigns of the opposite political parties. The main message of this type of ad is, “Do not vote for X candidate.” these types of ads mainly use red or dark colors to create that negative image.

Negative Ads

Ad type #5 Citizen Testimonials
(Source: Mopays.com on Facebook)
This type of ad is not like an endorsement ad. In this type of ad, ordinary Mauritians are used to talk in favor of the candidate. This type of ads reaches people better because people are able to associate themselves with the “ordinary Mauritian” talking about struggle stories that the candidate will fight against.

Citizen Testimonials

Ad type #6 The Future of Campaign Advertising
Everyone has adopted this trend of digitization. Even politicians are making use of Instagram live and Snapchat to carry forward their campaign. This clearly shows that even though television will remain the foundation for any ad campaigns, soon, every type of digital screen will host political appeals.

Advantages of Using a 2.0 Campaign

Greater Target Audience Reach
Social media platforms offer greater visibility to political parties as compared to traditional media. Many traditional media companies are now embracing the digital wave which benefits even more politicians during campaigns as they participate in live shows, important posts and events are often reposted by major media groups ensuring them more visibility. In Mauritius according to statistics, more than 750,000 people have a social media account and approximately the same amount of people have access to the internet. Accessibility and democratization of the internet and news meant that more news is consumed online rather than in traditional forms of media.

The above figure shows a comparison of followers of media printed media groups online who are likely to see their articles online as compared to their newspaper readership in 2017.

Accessibility
According to statistics from World Internet Stats more than 800,000 Mauritians were connected to the internet either by broadband of mobile phones. This represents 65% of the population. According to statistics Mauritius, connectivity among the youth, age 12-19 was 87% in 2016. During the same year, Statistics Mauritius reported that 87.3% of the population owned a mobile phone.

Internet usage statistics in Mauritius

Social Media statistics in Mauritius

Cost of Ads/Promotion
One of the major advantages of 2.0 campaigns is that it costs less than traditional media. Most of the political campaign was done on social media where politicians/campaign teams can create profiles and pages free of cost. These profiles are used to post information and other relevant communication from the candidate. Candidates can also choose to target specific audiences at a much lower cost as compared to traditional media. Many of the alliances also used advertising means on, websites and YouTube at a lower cost than traditional media. These ads allow politicians to target specific people based on information Facebook / Google has about its users.

Facebook’s option to boost and promote content.

The cost of advertising at prime hours (maximum target audience) on different platforms.
Metrics and Tracking

Metrics and Tracking
The ability to track and break down the numbers of a page or post is a major advantage of new media. As compared to traditional media, political campaigners can now have access to information such as the number of interactions on post and assess how well they are doing. This is critical as it allows to instantly change strategies if need be as the numbers are easily available. There is also the opportunity to give instant feedback from the target audience. Metrics also gives political analysts a lot of information.

Different relevant information provided by Facebook to track page/post-performance

The number of like of the 4 main party leaders in Mauritius

Most like post on Facebook from the 4 biggest party leaders in Mauritius

Wider Posts Variety
Unlike traditional media, new media gives opportunity to political candidates to communicate with their audience through different forms. During the campaign social media platforms have been flooded with written posts, graphically illustrated posts, videos as well as Facebook lives.

Different types of posts (multimedia) post on Facebook

Similarities and Differences between Political Parties

The main political parties for the Elections 2019 were the Mouvement Socialiste Militant (MSM), the Labour Party (PTR; French: Parti Travailliste) and the Mouvement Militant Mauricien. All three parties organized political campaigns with much ardor to be unique in disseminating their ideas. However, after scrutinizing the social media posts of these politicians, one can discern that they have done some similar campaigns.

Similarities:

These are political campaigns run on Facebook where both politicians are portrayed as earnest human beings. In these pictures, the pens are used as an epitome of seriousness, knowledge, and intellectual. When an audience sees the pictures, it tends to associate the political leaders to these attributes and qualities.

Besides, in the above pictures, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth and Mr Navin Ramgoolam are depicted as the family man. The pictures have been carefully chosen by the campaign manager so that it has an impact on the mind of the audience. The aim here is to have a psychological effect on the audience. Humans are emotional beings and are easily influenced by feelings attached to something. For instance, here the audience is guided by the emotions attached to the pictures.

Furthermore, another common aspect of the campaigns of the MSM and the Labour Party is the engagement with the elderly as shown below. Both political leaders designed campaigns that will target the old people directly. By doing so, they want to send out the message that their focus is not only on the youth and middle age population but also on the elderly. Through these campaigns, they announced measures that will be in favor of the elders.

Moreover, the leader, Mr Navin Ramgoolam and two other candidates, Mr Xavier Luc Duval and Mr Adrien Charles Duval of the Labour Party ran comparable campaigns where these individuals are illustrated as compassionate human beings. This is so as they are pictured with dogs that are considered men’s best friend. For instance, Adrien Charles Duval is characterized as a noble human being as he is accompanied by dogs that he adopted. He also voices out about animal abuse at the MSAW and measures that will be taken to halt cruelty. As for Xavier Luc Duval, he stressed on the measures that the Labour Party would implement in favour of stray dogs and animals as shown above.

As the saying goes “A picture is worth a thousand words”, this picture is intended to have an emotional impact in the minds of the audience. The quote and words used in this social media post have been thoughtfully chosen by the campaign manager so that it arouses emotions among the audience.

Differences
Besides, the leader, Mr Paul Raymond Berenger and the candidate, Joanna Berenger of the Mouvement Militant Mauricien, have done political campaigns from an ecologist perspective as the focal point in the environment. In the pictures above, it can be deduced that the candidates of the MMM want to reduce the carbon footprint in the world. The chart illustrates initiatives that can be taken to stop pollution. Post elections, Jonna Berenger and her team organized a cleaning day in the constituency number 16 which is around Vacoas and Floreal. One can conclude that the measures taken by the MMM were environment-friendly.

Domestic violence is a severe threat for many women. Thus, another interesting aspect of the campaign run by the MMM is promoting gender equality. This campaign is in favor of female who are victims of domestic violence and those who lost their lives due to this barbarism. The main target of this campaign is the female population of the country. Such campaigns may arouse feelings mostly among women and girls.

Politics is about communication and an election campaign is a game of influences through communication. If the politician manages to create an opinion in his favor in the head of a person, it is because he has acquired the vote of it. And the best way than to touch this person was through the social networks available on his mobile phone that remains in his possession and that he/she consults several times a day.
From what has been observed, almost every political parties were very much present on social media networks, each communicating with the audience differently.
Almost all political parties had a Facebook page, through which they conveyed convey the party’s “messages”.

The page of L’Alliance Nationale, for example, contained the announced election manifesto while on the page of the Mouvement Socialist Mauricien (MSM), members could attend the Prime Minister’s speeches live at the various conferences in which he participates, thanks to Facebook’s “Live” option. As for the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), it took the interventions of its candidates in various media and regularly posted images of words with ‘MMM’ in it.
Examples below:

For traditional parties, each constituency also has its own page, feeding, almost daily, with photos of the door-to-door exercises of their candidates. Programs surrounding the meetings are also announced. Big announcements of the parties were included on the pages, as well as members could watch live, the interventions of the candidates doing meetings.

As for the candidates of each party, they also created their own Facebook page through which they communicated with their supporters through photos or videos. Be it mainstream parties, small parties or independent candidates, they all made it a must to have a Facebook page and a social media presence.
As we might have noticed, most of the pages of the candidates or parties appeared on our feeds through sponsored ads on almost all social networks, be it Facebook, YouTube or Instagram.

While applications were growing everywhere. The MSM, launched its own – called Ensam, on October 2. The goal: show the projects implemented by the government or the ones it hopes to achieve as soon as possible, among others. Around 5,000 people had downloaded the app.

Ensam is a user-friendly application where one can access to latest updates and news about the on-going work of the Prime Minister, his government and his party. There is also a survey section where users can interact with the Prime Minister through feedbacks and surveys. Ensam has been rated 4.6/5 and it is to be noted that it has a total of 107 likes.

In the opposite camp, l’Alliance Nationale also launched its own app where it announced the measures they wished to implement and presented their candidates. The app got over 1000 downloads.

As mentioned before, each political party had its own Facebook page, through which they communicated with their audience. Below are the number of likes of those pages:

Talking about the 2019 electoral campaign and not mentioning the independent candidate Oliver Thomas would be an incomplete analysis.
At 26 years, he decided to present himself as an independent candidate for the elections way before Pravind Jugnauth announced the date of the elections.
He used his mobile phone, clicked pictures and shot videos, through which he communicated with his audience. Soon, he got a wider audience who started following him and point to be noted, he did not create any sponsored post. His page was organically reaching Facebook users. His campaign started months before the official announcement of the election date

The 2.0 a boon for small parties?

New media have big implications for political practices. They have radically changed the ways in which political parties operate and communicate. They have changed the way elections are being done, and how citizens engage themselves in politics. New media, such as websites, blogs, video-sharing platforms, digital apps, and social media, are continually expanding in innovative ways. New media has introduced an increased level of instability and unpredictability in to the political communication process. This is why many small parties in Mauritius which were not covered by traditional media such as radio or television or the press make use of the internet for their political campaigns. New media such as social network can even reach disinterested audience members through personalized, peer-to-peer channels, like Facebook. Using facebook, youtube, websites are vital for small parties as it is the only way for them to reach maximum people compared to other big parties which were covered by traditional media.

The use of social media in politics, including Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube has changed the way campaigns are run and how Mauritian especially youngsters interact with elected officials. The prevalence of social media in politics has made elected officials and candidates more accountable and accessible to voters. And the ability to publish content and broadcast it to millions of people instantaneously allows campaigns to carefully manage their candidates’ images at almost no cost. This is a big advantage for small political parties which do not have much money to invest in their campaigns. 

Facebook has become instrumental in organizing campaigns for newborn parties. They allow voters and activists to easily share news and information such as campaign events with each other. That’s what the “share” function on Facebook. The small parties can check the people who are following them on social media and customize their messages based on selected demographics. This enables them to reach maximum people and their target audience is mainly young people who surf more on the internet, on social media than listening to the radio or watching news on T.V. A campaign may find one message appropriate for voters under 30 years old will not be as effective with those over 60. Also, what is good for small parties is that they obtain feedback from their audience. It can also be a very bad thing, depending on how politicians respond. Having feedback enables them to change and adapt their messages or campaigns according to what the audience asks for. Today on Facebook people can “react” on a post to show their emotions: whether they like, love, complete disagree or angry, chocked. Through these new “reactions”, the political parties can have accurate feedback on people’s perceptions of what is being said. Facebook have energized younger voters, which, in turn, had a profound impact on elections. In Mauritius, Facebook is the most used network among youth for political information compared with other social networks such as Twitter or Instagram. This is why small parties chose young candidates and use facebook as their main source of media. The Internet and social media provide an opportunity to the young population for political discussion through various online groups, pages, and accounts.

In Mauritius, small parties depend a lot on social networks such as facebook and youtube. Facebook enables them to make “direct” during their meeting so as people can follow them lively and can still watch it after. As they do not have t.v coverage, they shared a lot of videos, photos and direct on facebook or youtube. 

Below are a few examples of how small parties use new media for promotion and diffusion of information.

PKM: Parti Kreol Mauricien

A newborn political party that targets mainly youngsters. Their facebook page is open to any user and thus anyone can interact, share video, photos and give feedback. 

Is it a good or bad thing that anyone can interact? Actually, on their facebook page, there is no publication from the administrator. Most of the publications come from the candidates and the public. They also send private messages to the members of the facebook page which can not always work properly. When surfing on their page, we can conclude that there is no official administrator of the page that has control on the publications etc. The main work is being done by the public or the candidates.

Mouvement Mauricien Social Democrate – MMSD 

Here are some examples of how MMSD make use of social media to put forward their candidates, leader, and campaign. What is good to notice is that Facebook is free they can post as much as they want, but do they know how to use it to get the attention of maximum of people? These small parties do not have traditional media to announce their meeting so what they do is to use new media, the Internet to pass the message. 

Lalit 

They have a facebook page and a website. Compared to the other small parties, Lalit Mauricien has a website so that even those who are not facebook users can have access to information concerning their campaign and candidates. But still, the website is not updated on a regular basis!

Causes for worry?

The campaign for the 2019 elections was relentless with unfiltered content being posted all over social media. These posts and articles online violated multiple sections of the Criminal Code of Mauritius like publishing fake news or any other content which may cause ethnic unrest. While recent amendments have been made to the Information and Communication Technologies to protect users online, many shortcomings have been noticed during this campaign. The fact that the police often cannot open an inquiry unless there is a complaint from a citizen has to be reviewed. The number of information websites for means party propaganda has played an important role in these elections. Lastly, constitutional rights such as the right of privacy have been violated as well as banking secrets leaked. Should there be a greater legal reform for the future?

Personal bank details of Dr. Navin Ramgoolam revealed.

Dr. Navin Ramgoolam warning voters about fake News.

Global Trends
The world’s biggest democracies are finding it hard to deal with the issues of a 2.0 campaign. With the U.S elections allegedly interfered with by Russian hacking many democracies are now working closely with Google and Social Media platforms to halt the diffusion of fake news and educate people on how to detect real from fake news. New York senate representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently questioned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg if the platform was going to take down false and unverified information. Twitter on its side has taken the pledge to suspend political advertisement on its platform.

Facebook and Google asked to suspend political ads.

Twitter announces it will suspend political ads

Influence of live streaming on political campaign

• • Live streaming refers to the process of how the online streaming media is recorded concurrently and broadcast in actual time of the event to allow to the viewer to see it using their media devices such as laptop, mobile phones, tablets and television.
  • The process alone has the power to distribute the same video on a global scale to reach the target viewers which can count in terms of millions or even billions.

Live streaming (alongside social media) and political campaigns
With the rise of live streaming video, this means that people have started watching the news happen as it occurs. On the one hand, political campaigns now have a whole new means of information distribution to worry about. On the other, social media, and live streaming in particular, is the most easily controlled way of getting your message to the public in history.

With modern technology, including social media (for instance, Facebook), it is now possible to attend virtual events where you can participate in live streaming events and interact with politicians and candidates.

While reporters and campaigns rush to adopt live streaming apps to broadcast directly from the campaign trail using their phones and other devices, groups that specialize in political tracking and dirt-digging are investing in the technology to share video footage they can use to degrade the opposition. When you are the first source of information — whether it is feeding clips to the press or posting on social media — you have the best chance of framing that news to fit your interests

Facebook Live Stats

• The Facebook Live video view count climbed to 2 billion viewers last year.
• In 2017, 1 out of every 5 Facebook videos was a live broadcast.
• In 2018, the number of Facebook Live broadcasts reached 3.5 billion.
• The daily watch time for Facebook Live broadcasts quadrupled in a single year.
• Facebook Live videos produce 6 times as many interactions as traditional videos.
• Facebook Live videos get 10 times more comments than regular videos.
• Facebook Live’s search popularity increased by 330% in just one year
• Facebook Live users watch FB Live videos 3 times longer than pre-uploaded videos

We’ve come to the very end of our hand-picked Facebook Live stats. Some of the most important stats to keep in mind include, first of all, the rapid growth of FB Live broadcasts, which climbed to 3.5 billion last year. Secondly, the new video format from Facebook is used in various forms ranging from Q&A interviews to how-to content. Lastly, live video isn’t going anywhere, and the future of social media will most likely be all about video content, both pre-recorded and live.

When Live-Streaming bumps up against Freedom of Speech and Censorship
https://www.wsj.com/video/facebook-live-the-need-to-censor-violence/AD152739-E823-4409-81A3-34C7BC74608B.html

Citizen Journalism
With the mushrooming of internet users, high broadband connections and affordable technological devices, people from all around the world are being exposed to a pool of free information, messages and other contents. “Nowadays we are living in a world that has become radically interconnected, interdependent and communicated in the formations and flows of the media.” (Stuart Allan). The process of reading and sharing is becoming common, and so is freedom of expression. Due to this, online users can express their opinions or views about topics or internet content that interest them.

Similarly, millions of users are playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information. This practice is known as citizen journalism. The growing trend in citizen journalism, also known as public journalism, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, journalism by ordinary people on the street, is adding a new dimension to the way local, national and international news is presented.

Different schools regarding citizen journalism
One of the main questionable area of this phenomenon is whether this ‘new journalism’ will take over traditional journalism. Journalism, as every other profession, has set(s) of rules, regulations, laws and important basic ethical procedures to be respected. These practices are often neglected in citizen journalism. Some of the main critics are:

1. Objectivity – are citizen journalists providing objective news, that is content which is free from their personal beliefs and views?
2. Quality – are the news contents shared by citizen journalist well researched, written or expressed, and shared?
3. Accuracy – are the news content accurate, reliable and valid?
4. Truthfulness – are the news content free from the ideologies of ‘fake news’?

While some might believe that social media is replacing journalism and subsequently killing off professional and traditional journalism, others (including me) believe that citizen journalism can and does support professional journalism, not kill it. Professional journalist get their sources and information from most of citizen journalist and are actually an advantage to their profession.

Tiktok Phenomenon

TikTok, a Chinese iOS and Android social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos, was launched in 2017 by Chinese developer ByteDance. On 23 January 2018, the TikTok app ranked number one among free mobile app downloads on app stores in Thailand and other countries. TikTok employs artificial intelligence to analyse users’ interests and preferences through their interactions with the content, and display a personalized content feed to each user. In Mauritius, TikTok has been identified by the National Computer Board (NCB) Computer Emergency Response Team Mauritius (CERTMU) recently. The recent boom of this application has made the headline of local newspapers in 2019. On social media, several videos are circulated, outside the Tiktok application, which questions the privacy of this application. The Security Alert, released on September 23, pointed out that cyberbullying cases are rising in Mauritius.

Indeed, this application is an open platform for users to efficiently express their talent and encourage the entertainment and leisure time, however the dark sides of it remains an alarming concern. Hence, it is advised to make a positive use of this and users should be careful of what they are creating and/or sharing as their videos are not 100% protected.

Streaming videos vs Television

• Streaming videos are becoming more and more popular.
• You Tube, Netflix and online podcasts are examples of streaming media.
• Streaming videos has started during the mid-2000s. You Tube was the first platform (launched in 2005) to allow video sharing, a few years later Amazon was the first one to introduce streaming in 2006 and not Netflix as a lot of person seem to believe.
• There seems to be a war going on between streaming videos and cable television.
• Television still occupy the first place although streaming videos is getting more and more popularity through the years. the latest survey conducted by Nielsen’s published the 08/05/2019 affirmed that ‘As of May 2019, 134.2 million (56%) of U.S. adults streamed non-linear video (new media/streaming video) to their TV set through an internet-connected device or smart television. Compared with just two years ago, 40 million more Americans are streaming content to their TV sets.
• The most popular streaming platfoms includes Netflix, Freeform, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu.
• Streaming tv can be considered as a cultural phenomenon as it is transforming the society culturally, individuals no longer watch or consume content the same way compared to ten years back. Streaming videos are borderless.
• Streaming videos have also changed the family that is long ago watch TV was considered as some bonding time although the concept has remained the same that is to entertain but with streaming videos family has become fragmented, instead of gathering to watch the Tv, each watches their favorite shows on one of the many devices. Streaming videos are ecological as well, according to research, streaming a movie requires 78% of the energy it takes to ship a physical copy.
• Another aspect of streaming media and how it is changing our society is on the political level, streaming videos has somehow democratized the political scene, for instance the launching of the Parliament TV in Mauritius has allowed Mauritians to watch the political debate going on each week without no interruptions or editing, this somehow contributes to what is called participatory democracy.
• During the political campaign of this year the media website ‘Défimedia’ broke his audience records during this last month. (https://www.defimedia.info/defimediainfo-bat-son-record-daudience).
• Streaming videos are replacing fundraising tv shows. Monday 23th September 2019, a live streaming game created by a company known as ‘ZeratoR’ has collected 3.5 euros for a charity. Video link: (https://techno.konbini.com/fr/gaming/z-event-ledition-2019-entre-dans-lhistoire-en-recoltant-35-millions-deuros/)
• Another app known as Games Done Quickly (GDQ) organizes online event to raised fund for charities.
• In an article published by the magazine Forbes, it has been argued that telethon barely exists and is disappearing from the media stage and are being replaced by live streaming videos and gaming to raise funds for charity.

Differences between local channels/satellite channels and online streaming
The data below is according to statistics Mauritius:
The number of mobile cellular phone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants increased from 145.4 to 151.6.The number of internet subscriptions per 100 inhabitants went from 98.7 to 107.1.

Internet Usage in Mauritius
In 2018, International Bandwidth usage increased to 151.0 Gbits/s from 96.3 Gbits/s in 2017.
The usage per inhabitant reached 119,318 bits per second from 76,124 in 2017,
According to ITU, Mauritius ranked first among African countries and 72nd out 176 countries worldwide in terms of ICT development in 2016.
This let us suggest that the number of people having access to streaming videos is increasing. Data is mostly consumed nowadays. All improvement sin Mauritius has led our country to consume content on platforms like Facebook, web, YouTube etc.
However, it can be seen that elders tend to be the majority to consume data on TV, whether being local or international channels. When asking them why they do so, they simply argue that they have difficulties when surfing on the Web to look for content to watch. Many are not computer literate. They don’t understand how streaming works. Some gave as reasons that they have always watch content from TV and don’t want to change their habits. They are already used to TV and enjoy watching their soap operas at a specific time.

My.T channel
Was launched in late 2013
It operates via FTTH and offers various packages
There are 50 basic My.T channels which are offered (with options to be upgraded to about 95 channels)

Canal+
It is the leader in the digital pay market in Mauritius. There are no statistics available but however it has been seen from the net and personal interviews that out of 10 people 7 were Canal+ users.

MBC
It is a governmental television
Its programs are broadcasted in 12 languages (which is convenient to people speaking different languages). Out of 10 people, 3 people were watching MBC.

Mauritius – Households with television

Households with television (%) in Mauritius was reported at 96.88 % in 201

Mauritius – Fixed broadband Internet subscribers

Fixed broadband Internet subscribers in Mauritius was reported at 212600 in 2016

Mauritius – Mobile cellular subscriptions

Mobile cellular subscriptions in Mauritius was reported at 1814000 in 2016

Mauritius – Mobile and fixed-line telephone subscribers

Mobile and fixed-line telephone subscribers in Mauritius was reported at 1668700 in 2011

The Netflix phenomenon
Doing some research, I came across a blog called “Noulakaz”. Where according to the unofficial Netflix online Global search, Mauritius is ranked 136th world wide with a percentage of 15.3% (approx.) of users.
What encourages people to use Netflix is the cost which is very low – about Rs360 per month and also its fluidity.
However, all contents are not available in Mauritius that is why the fees are not so expensive.
Some people enjoy the programs/films/series/documentary available on Netflix as they will never see these on local channels in Mauritius. Even when watching channels like Canal+ you will find yourself watching the same thing over and over again because of this system of diffusing it several times over a period of one month.

Conclusion
We can say that the statistics in Mauritius is balanced, we see that majority of elderly people prefers watching old traditional media whereas youngsters prefer consuming data from live streaming videos like on local radios (private and public). News is broadcast and they have access to it more easily. Even for watching movies they prefer watching movies on the net. Many issues have been reported on local channels so they prefer investing in apps like Netflix or even freely on the net than to pay for watching the same things over and over again. Elders prefers to stick to it as some are less use to it.

Images source: World Bank

International influencers

The phenomenon of earning money online through social media and other platforms has reached the whole world. In each country, we can see people trying to use the psychology of influence to make engaging art and change lives.
This phenomenon does not have any barrier. Even age cannot stop people from being influencers.

Ryan’s World

For example, a 7 year old boy generated $22 million by reviewing toys on his YouTube page.

This young boy has 22.5 million subscribers to his YouTube account. According to Forbes magazine, his YouTube account was the highest grossing among all accounts. He generated $22 million in revenue, double of what he earned the previous year where he was only 8th of highest grossing YouTube accounts.
The account began when Ryan, then a 4-year-old fan of toy-review videos, asked his parents if he could also review toys on YouTube. Ryan ToysReview started out slowly until a July 2015 video went viral. The video featured Ryan opening and reviewing a box containing more than 100 toys from Pixar’s “Cars” series. It has close to 935 million views.

His latest video titled “How to Make DIY Craw Machine from Cardboard!!!” was posted on 10^th November 2019 and as of 13.32 on the 12^th November 2019, he already had 2,125,121 views. To this day, this young lad has a grand total of 33,656,318,037 views on YouTube.

 This kid is not stopping anytime soon.

Zoella

Gender is also no barrier to the phenomenon. Several women are major actors in the influencers industry.

Zoe Elizabeth Sugg, better known as Zoella is a British fashion vlogger. She was born on March 28, 1990 in Lacock. A 19 year old Zoella started her blog zoella280390, dedicated to beauty and fashion, in February 200Collecting a thousand followers by year end—while employed by English fashion brand New Look—the blog metamorphosed into YouTube’s Zoella. On YouTube, Zoella has 11.6 million subscribers for a total view count of 1,113,291,735 as of 12th November 2019.

According to Spears magazine, her net worth is $2.5 million dollars. As per CelebsNow, YouTube vloggers earn approximately ‘£0.0007 per view’ and Sugg’s channels draw 22 million clicks per month on average, equating to monthly earnings of £15,000. CelebsNow also reported that her written blog Zoella.co.uk makes around £4,000 per month from ads, with approximately 7.4 million clicks each month.

According to CelebsNow and Superdrug, Sugg’s beauty line has sold around £1,430,000 worth of products. Overall, brand Zoella has reportedly earned £3,884,338 in the last one year.

Sugg has written blog has recorded over 540 million clicks as of September 2015, while views for Zoella have crossed 663 million (over 9.9 million subscriber base). MoreZoella claims over 290 million clicks (subscriber list: 3.4 million plus). Her Twitter following is over four million and Instagram, seven million. Zoella has an approximate viewership of 12 million a month.
Inking a two-book deal with Penguin boosted by a £100,000 advance in 2014, Girl Online, her first novel, was launched on November 25, 2014. Selling 78,109 copies in the first week, it broke the record for highest sales by a debut author (beating Fifty Shades of Grey and even Harry Potter).
Zoella is an example of female influencers who have made it on their own.

Zoella has 9.6 million followers on Instagram.

Logan Paul

Logan Paul is among the highest grossing male influencer in the world. Logan Alexander Paul was born on the 1st April 1995. HE is an American You Tuber, internet personality and actor known for his YouTube video content. As well as posting on his own YouTube channel.

The 24 year old has 20 million subscribers on YouTube with 4,756,655,709 total views as of 12th November 2019.

He started his YouTube channel on the 28th August 2015. According to nailbuzz.com the vlogging channel, Logan Paul Vlogs, has over 20 million subscribers growing by over 2,000 new subs daily and has accumulated over 5 billion views so far. This one gets an average of 1.6 million views per day which should generate an estimated revenue of around $6,400 per day ($2.3 million a year) from ads that appear on the videos.
Logan makes extra income from his acting career and sponsorship deals. He has appeared in shows like Law & Order, Weird Loners, Stitches, Bizaardvark and Walk the Prank. His web series outside his YouTube channel include Logal Paul vs, and Bad Weather Films. He also sells his merchandise called Maverick Merch on his website which is estimated to generate an annual revenue of over $10 million. He also made a lot of millions from his fight with KSI which is said to have been watch by 773,000 people who paid $10 each to watch the stream.

Baddiewinkle

Influencers also do not have any age. This is best exemplified by Helen Winkle, better known on social media as baddiewinkle.

Helen Ruth Elam was born on 18th July 1928 at Hazard, Kentucky. She is an American internet personality. She became an Internet sensation at the age of eighty-five. Her social media tag line—”Stealing Your Man Since 1928″—has become a popular saying for teens and young adults. She is characterized by wearing eccentric clothes, promoting the legalization of medical marijuana, and her innuendo. She has millions of followers and views on social media, where she posts photos and videos of herself, often with suggestive clothing with peculiar prints, or little clothing. She shot to social media fame last year when her great-granddaughter, 19-year-old Kennedy Lewis, posted a photo of Winkle in cut-off jean shorts and a tie dyed shirt on Instagram. She has attracted some pretty famous followers, like Miley Cyrus, Nicole Richie and Gwen Stefani.

Winkle can make up to $5,000 for a paid post on Instagram. Baddiewinkle’s net worth stands at $1.3 million as of 2018

Local Influencers

Mauritius is also being caught by the influencers’ phenomenon. Mauritians had so many chances to grasp the moments but probably they never realized. Now they are maximizing their talents and being influencers. Some like Raju Birion are going down the tried and tested way of comedy but others are going for more unexplored territories like Nehal Mohabeer who tries his hand at gaming. Through this report, we are going to profile these neo-influencers and show how Mauritians lack nothing in terms of talents.

El Mehsen Khan

El Mehsen, the talented make-up artist who can do mostly any
transformation with his magical touch and brush stokes. Being
the talk of the town, this young passionate of art is not only a
make-up artist but also a fashion and model influencer. With his
aestetic touch, his artistic imagination and creativity, this young
man created a name for himself in the make-up industry
through his determination and creative side.

The now famous make-up artist of the M.A.C showroom of bagatelle
was a topper at Arts during his college days and loved playing with
colours. Being so agile and clever with paint, the artist decided to try
mixing colours of a make-up palette. It was in 2007, where the artist
was only 13 years old that he did his first trial on his mother which
turned out to be a masterpiece. Moreover, his first bridal make-up was
done on his bestfriend for her wedding.

From fairy wolrd to digital world               

It all started in 2008 where El Mehsen posted a first picture on
social media. The number of views,
likes and comments kept
increasing as he updated his
pages with his creativity.
Furthermore, he claims that
nothing pushed him to work
online but now, everything is done
through the internet. This tool
helps him a lot to keep in touch
with his fans and followers, and to
communicate more effectively
with his clients, and for bookings
purposes.

Social Media’s impact on his life

Always having great feedbacks on his social media platforms, the
artist with magical hands now has 6K followers on his Instagram and
nearly 7K followers on his Facebook page. Being an influencer in the
same area of his daily job is simply wonderful as he wants to inspire
people with his unique style. Moreover, he claims that in 2007, there
was no such focus on make up and could not be portrayed easily due
to lack of technological tools. Nowadays, make-up is everything and
technology has made everything much better and easier.

El Mehsen claims that he obtains contracts based on his works
portrayed online as being an influencer is part of his daily life. You can
easily get a glimpse of what he posts through his stories and feeds.
All you need to do is to search for Mehsen_artistry and click the
follow button to enter his colourful and unique world.

Everyone has dreams to            
accomplish and El
Mehsen wants to be on
international platforms
to showcase his work. He
is indeed a very friendly
person who is always
ready to talk and give
some advice when it
comes to make-up.

Raju Birion

Mauritian, Raju Birion is a young and fresh graduate from the University of Mauritius and has a very interesting hobby, which is to make people laugh. He is very well known in Mauritius as well as in other countries through his entertaining videos. Seems extrovert but is quite shy, yet, he always tries to spread happiness everywhere he goes. He was, at the beginning, a simple young man with a Facebook account where he would upload various interesting posts, which would interest many of his friends. Later, he started making videos on snapchat and suddenly he is famous for his great sense of humor!

Factual review of Joseph Guy Vincent Duvergé

Vincent history

In 2012, Vincent Duvergé created a YouTube channel where he regularly posted comedy clips that he produced with his best friends Yann Charlotte and David André. The channel encountered its first big success after he released a parody.

In January 2014, Vince Duvergé flies to Australia to study cinematography. During his studies he was awarded at the Kogarah Film Festival with Best Actor, Best Script and Best Film awards.

Young comedian, director and producer, Vincent started vlogging right from the year 2012. He became the most watched YouTube comedian of Mauritius in 2013 especially the Miss Mauritius vlog with a record of 184,801 views on YouTube 6 years ago.

Figure1: Vincent Channel

Before his career to One TV, Vincent Duvergé developed a series of videos in his early twenties. Each 100,000 views, Vincent gets a total amount of 100$. Starting with his personal channel on YouTube, Vincent did the maximum to achieve a good number of viewers. It can be clearly noted that with the use of new media Vincent has proved that a Mauritian vlogger can stand out and make a difference.

At its most basic level, influence can be estimated by examining the size of a person’s social networks, such as Facebook connections or YouTube subscribers’ especially local Mauritian bloggers, which is very minim. To a more thorough analysis, Vincent keeps having an increase of followers as people tend to keeping up regularly with his relatable videos to day-to-day issues and trends.

Vincent Duvergé’s videos has helped
him immensely in shaping his future and
gaining more exposure through new
media and hence securing a job
establishing a new strategy at One TV,
Radio One, thus increasing the number
of subscribers hereafter.
The young man has found a way
of gaining remuneration with his YouTube videos.

Wa, Man. Zafr la local

The YouTube Channel “Wa Man” has been recently created this year, precisely on 15 March 2019. The director of the channel is a young man named Ayush Ajoodhea and the producer is Prashin Lutch. The videos’ purpose is mainly based upon entertainment related content. Since the creation of the YouTube channel, it has gained 2,522,247 views and has 34.5K subscribers upon this date, 14th November 2019.

Our team gets in touch with Ayush through Instagram’s private message and asks him some questions about the “Wa Man” YouTube channel. The young man tells us that his passion for videography begins in 2017 and that it was his new year’s resolution for 2019 to be a YouTuber. He is fully concentrating his time in making the videos, as it is his full time job. He is remunerated by google through ads and asking about an approximate amount of what he gets and if it is sufficient for his living, he prefers not to say anything about it by replying “no comments” for his own privacy.

Inside “Wa man” is a video that aims at showing viewers what is happening behind the scenes. It shows the efforts that are put together in the objective of satisfying the viewers’ needs and expectations. The video is informative and highlights the daily struggles which a YouTuber may face.

Their main target audience are primarily adolescents. Youngsters often see themselves as being rebel and like to associate their social identity to extreme contents that include using vulgarity and sex related contents. There is always a need for adrenaline through experiments and challenges by young people. This is also illustrated in the videos. Here are some examples of the type of videos that are proposed by “Wa Man”.

Mauritius has many people who use their different talents on social media platforms and are major influencers in their fields of specialization.

Nehal Mohabeer

Nehal Mohabeer is a 19 year old, who has a YouTube channel which focus on mobile gaming. His contents are related to the popular game, “PUBG- Player Unknown’s Battle Ground”. His channel’s name, BBC NEHAL has been created May 21, 2013 and has 197,830 views and 3.12K subscribers in total. He is not getting any money from it and does it out of passion and as leisure time. His aim is to enhance the gaming experience and PUBG community in Mauritius.

Oliver Thomas

Oliver Thomas is a young man of 26 years old who was an independent candidate at the 20th constituency for the 2019 legislative. He has a diploma in Marketing from Charles Telfair Institute and a certificate in Political Studies from l’institut Cardinal Jean Margéot. He decided not to take the traditional path for his political campaign and instead chose to use digital platforms. He created a YouTube channel where he posted videos of him in his constituency and showed people why he deserves a shot to be elected from there. His total of 1,286,119 views on YouTube as of 14th November 2019 helped him get 3890 votes for the legislatives, which was roughly 12.13% of total voters. This shows that his way of using digital platforms certainly helped him in a big way.

Visham Ramdoo

Javesh Visham Ramdoo is one of the most popular and recognizable face in the entertainment industry in Mauritius. He has a very strong social media presence with over 783,594 total views on YouTube, nearly 44,000 followers on Facebook and more than 10,000 followers on Instagram. Visham started out by imitating famous people like “Mami Kloune” and his passion drew him to do videos. Now he is a comedian, humorist, singer, voice impersonator and animator. He generates revenue from his social media presence but also through shows and events. As of now, he has done more than 400 shows. He has shared the stage with various others celebrities like Alain Ramanisum in collaborations. In addition, he endorses brands like Jetha Tulsidas.

Jochen Kirstätter

Jochen Kirstätter, also known as “Joki” is a software craftsman, blogger, community founder and speaker. He was awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Developer Technologies as well as Visual Developer for Visual FoxPro in the past. He also founded the now largest IT community in Mauritius, Google Developer Group Mauritius. He also has a big blogging presence with over 400 articles on various IT topics on his blog “Get Blogged by JoKi.”

Nalini Aubeeluck

Nalini Aubeeluck is the director and choreographer of the Nalini Dance Group. She recently received an award in the prestigious competition, The Outstanding Young Person 2009, organised by Junior Chamber of Commerce. She anchored various well-known TV shows and presented the weather forecast at peak time on the National TV channel, Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation. She was a member of jury for the famous national dance competition Dance Fever.  She had the female lead role in the successful feature film LONBRAZ KANN that has been acclaimed in different film festival around the world. She also has her own clothing brand FAITH. This woman has a big social media presence with over 22,000 followed on Facebook.

Om Lombard

Om Lombard is an international model based in Mauritius. He created a French Bio Organic Traditional Bakery in Mauritius : La Provencal Boulangerie. At the end of 2010, he created his own FASHION BRAND: OM MY GOD!! With his first shop in Grand Bay. He has a strong social media presence with his followers amounting to 255k on Facebook and 142k on Instagram.

Anne Murielle Ravina

Anne Murielle Ravina has had a dream run in the world of fashion. She was 1st crowned Miss Uom, which opened the doors for her to be to participate in Miss Mauritius. She won the crown of Miss World Mauritius 2018 and was 2nd Miss World Africa in China. She is an ambassador for Global Rainbow Foundation and Rodrigues Tourism and her posts on social media are followed closely by her loyal fanbase.

Conclusion

Investopedia defines big data as “the large, diverse sets of information that grow at ever-increasing rates. It encompasses the volume of information about user’s autobiography and often comes from multiple sources. Big data can also be categorized as structured or unstructured.
Big data is collected from social media platforms and websites, through product purchases, electronic check-ins, locations, interests and questionnaires. Big data has its importance in the marketing area mainly as it has the potential to provide companies with profitable insights into their customers. These further enable marketers to refine marketing campaigns maximize customer engagement and conversion rates.
The realm of big data is a million dollar generating business considering how it is an important tool used in the marketing industry to affect the decision making of people. More often internet users receive an advertisement in mail or online that is quite relevant to their situation or their interest. Today there are over 4,000 data brokering companies worldwide that sell these data to leading companies across the world which explains the relevancy of advertisements to users. Acxiom is one of the largest data brokering companies in the world has over 23,000 servers that collect and analyze data for 500 million consumers worldwide.
Every search is monitored by data brokering companies and the information will be sold to companies so that they can create online ads to catch the attention of the user.
Now data brokering is a 200 million dollar industry.

Issues related to Big Data

Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying takes place over digital devices and can occur through SMS, Text, and apps, or online in social media, forums, or gaming where people can view, participate in, or share content like photos, messages, or pages that don’t get taken down, even the person has been asked to do so. It includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Some cyberbullying crosses the line into unlawful or criminal behaviour.
Cyberbullying statistics (2019) worldwide reveal alarming facts about virtual harassment, its impact, and the many different shapes and forms it can take.

Examples of Cyberbullying cases are:

• Tyler Clementi: A shy 18-year-old university freshman with a passion for playing the violin, jumped to his death from the George University Bridge.
• Ryan Halligan: He committed suicide on the 7th October 2003 where they found that he was humiliated by peers at school and online

The Mauritian Cybercrime Online Reporting System (MAUCORS) is a national online system that allows the public to report cybercrimes occurring on social media securely. It also provides advices to help recognizing and avoid common types of cybercrimes which takes place on social media websites.
Mauritius amends Information and Communication Technologies Act (ICTA) to include clause to impress heavy sentences for online messages that may be considered aggravating. Here is a screenshot showing a case of bullying which happens in Mauritius; a young man, Atish Ramnaraynan who died because of cyberbullying.

The screenshots below are some examples of cyberbullying and this is happening in Mauritius where we can see in the comment sections where people are attacking the TikTok users Arjoon and his cousin Deepti on their physical appearances which is part of online bullying.

Interconnectedness- Connecting phones to PCs
An important word that we need to know is ‘Tethering’ which means connecting two things, which is basically used for sharing the data connection of our smartphone to PC or Laptop.
This feature enables us to share information from one device to another but connecting phones to PCs/Laptops has its drawbacks. This gives the possibility to have full access to your information and beyond. How is that possible? It can be done by a legacy system of commands called AT-commands which can be used by attacker to get your phone number and downloads the contacts which are stored in the SIM card.
A lot of information are being exchanged between two devices which include phones name, the manufacturer as well, the serial number, file system, etc. So, hacker break into a smart-phone and take control of it and that’s why as mentioned above, there is a risk of data loss and driving balance to red.

Malwares & Virus
Malware is designed to cause trouble by gaining access to your device. It does not only having access to your information but sometimes it is made to steal information.
Computer can become infected in several ways. Firstly, by clicking on links to malicious sites in email messages and on messages on social media. Confidential data such as passwords are a key target of cybercriminals. Data lost and theft can occur because of malwares. The damage caused by a successful attack that erases a user’s data can be measured in terms of the value of the erased information to the user. The often neglected way to prevent data loss is by taking regular backups.

Hacking
The aim of hackers is to exploit computers illegally to steal people’s data. Hackers usually parse breach information that already exist for passwords, usernames, and emails and try to reuse those data on famous websites. Hackers use the ‘checker’ scripts, created for test batches of username: password combinations on specific websites to verify available accounts. These scripts exist for any service and are regularly updated and move within the hacker community.
Some famous hackers are:
Kevin Mitnick: He is the CEO, Team Leader, and Chief White Hat Hacker and the most popular one worldwide. Before being a trustworthy security consultant to Fortune 500 and governments around the world, he belong to the list of the FBI’s Most Wanted as he hacked into 40 big corporations. Also, he was the “most wanted computer criminal in United States history.”
Ankit Fadia: Ankit Fadia, an Indian “ethical hacker”, whose work usually include proxy websites and lifestyle, OS and networking based tips and tricks. The latter gives online certified Ethical hacking course.
Garry McKinnon: The hacker hacked 97 US military to gather data and the NASA regarding UFOs more than a decade ago.

Data breach
A data breach is the intended or unintended release of secure or private or confidential data to an environment which is not trustworthy.
Linkedln
Linkedln’s 167,370,910 accounts were hacked in June 2012, leaking emails and passwords. This illegal act was committed by Brandon Charles Glover and Vasile Mereacre, the one who hacked Uber.
Google+
In 2019, a bug in Google+ Exposed 500,000 users’ information for about 3 years. The bug had revealed users’ name, age, email address, occupation and some profile information shared secretly among users that should not have been obtainable. Google+ allowed an investigation to take place regarding this matter.
The Guardian revealed that Google decided to shut down user accessibility to Google+ after solving the bug to maintain their image and identity as well as ameliorate privacy protections.
However, Facebook is among the first names that crops up when the issue of data privacy is cropped up. The major leak of information is mainly through Third-Party apps.According to a study made by Na Wang, Heng Xu and Jens Grosslags, the privacy threats associated with the use of Third-Party apps on Facebook as affirmed by a Wall Street Journal that found out that numerous Third-Party apps on Facebook are extracting identifiable user information from the platform and sharing this bounty with advertising companies. There are more than 30 billion pieces of content (links, news, stories, posts, notes, photos) which is shared on Facebook on which users interact with over 900 million objects each month. By the end of the research, it became obvious that a large number of users’ personal information are being transmitted from Facebook to external entities.
Moreover, in Facebook’s Privacy Settings for apps or instant games, users can control the information sharing between them and other applications which were signed in using Facebook. Access to some information categories can be denied, however, there are some fields that cannot be denied access and are marked as “required” by Facebook as shown below:

It was also noted that there is insufficient reflection of the data requested. As an example, “Access my photos” was used to see whether the dialog would truly give the Third-Party app’s information practices. However, the dialog fails to demonstrate how by a simple “User photos” permission, the real information that the app could access is not limited to the shared photos as the permission enables the app to access all albums objects the user has created. Below is a chart of all the information that can be accessed by a simple “User Photos” permission.

Link between Cambridge Analytica and Campaign 2.0
Cambridge Analytica made headlines in March 2018 after a whistleblower came forward with some revelations about the company. However, Cambridge Analytica also do data brokerage for political purposes during electoral campaigns in which it sells political parties data about individuals so that these political parties can create ads or run their campaigns around the behavioural pattern of the public.
In 2018, Cambridge Analytica has used Facebook as a way to harvest the personal information of people so that it can be used for political advertising motives. It was then, that the public became aware of how unprotected the data they put online was unprotected and how, if it gets in the wrong hands, can be used against them and their will. When it was first reported, Facebook refused to comment on it but rather said it was being investigated. Due to this breach of data, people were targeted with political ads which were personalized based on their personal information so that they can be manipulated for Donald Trump to be voted in the 2016 election. The data was obtained through a personality test app that was on facebook so that the data of people who used the app would be pulled out, this includes the information about what their friends liked without their consent. ‘thisismydigitallife’ was a creation of Global Science Research that was run by Cambridge-based academic Aleksandr Kogan which was quickly used by 320,000 by facebook users. The data of around 50 million users was harvested in just two months by accessing those users’ friends networks. This data gained allowed Trump to score an upset win against Hillary Clinton. Through that campaign, Trump used the data to spread narratives on social media aiming to ignite a culture war, suppress black voter turnout and exacerbate racist views by using the help of cambridge analytica to create online personalised ads.
We can observe similarities with the Mauritian Campaign 2.0 where the is the use of social media platforms for political campaigns. The rise of social media has made it possible for political parties to use them as a way to advertise about their motives and parties. Campaign 2.0 allows the political parties to have a strong presence online trying to influence the online users’ decisions during election period.

Safety Measures for Big Data
Referring to the Cambridge Analytica issue, we found that Mark Zuckerberg has listed some changes and updates concerning the protection of data and they are as follows:

• On 19th March 2018, a forensic audit of Cambridge Analytica and other parties that were involved in the misuse of date were being pursued.
• On March 21st, Facebook promised to investigate profoundly all apps that have access to large amounts of data and information through the platform, audit any suspicion activity and would ban any developer who misused personally identifiable information and data.
• On August 22, a spokeswoman stated that third party apps were being investigated and more than 400 were suspended.
• On the 1st of May, Facebook created the ‘clear history’ tool that would allow users to force Facebook to delete all the information that it gathers about users while the browse through the web. No information would be contained about any users who use the clear history tool.

Other than the safety measures that Facebook stated: a user has other ways of protecting his/her data online. The following are the types of safety measures that can be used to protect online data.

• Installing good anti-virus software capable of scanning HTTPS traffic can protect users from phishing attacks. The antivirus will be able to scan through encrypted web communication that will analyze the content of website a user has been browsing and it will try to identify patterns that can be linked to potential malicious websites.
• A user is advised not to open suspicious email, not to download pirated software and to access only e-commerce websites that support HTTPS. This will enhance the protection of their data online.
• Do not connect to unknown networks because those can perform middleman attacks against you by intercepting the sensitive data you transfer online.

Laws in Mauritius Regarding Data Privacy
A huge amount of information is being shared through online platforms, and a big proportion of this amount is about personal data. Mauritian citizens have the right to privacy which is expressed in Sections 3 and 9 of the Constitution of Mauritius and Article 22 of the Mauritian Civil Code.
The General Data Protection Regulation was published in the Official Journal of the EU in May 2016 and came into force on the 25th of May 2018. It a law with extraterritorial reach which protects privacy rights and has obligations for example, consent requirements, data breach notification, appointment of data processors and new processes. This means that the GDPR is relevant to Mauritius as it applies to every data controller and processor regardless of geographical location. Online actions such as sending marketing emails and adverts using big data have to comply with the GDPR and this led to some changes, for example, targeting adverts for baby products at someone who searches for “morning sickness” online may be unlawful profiling based on the collection of special category personal data. Purchase marketing lists also must be subject to critical scrutiny under the GDPR.
The Data Protection Act 2017 came into force on the 15th of January 2018. The role of the DPA 2017, is shaped by the principles of GDPR, that is to aim at protecting and safeguarding privacy rights of individuals during the processing and storing process. The missions of the Data Protection Act are to “ensure lawfulness, fairness and transparency such that individuals are well informed and afforded protection for the confidentiality of their personal data in order to reduce the growing risks of data leaks in an age of ‘e-society’.

According to these laws, a data subject must provide unambiguous consent and must express by a statement or a clear affirmative action to have their data be recorded and stored by any physical or virtual platform. Opting out also must be clear and simple, such as a checkbox and further barriers like confirm in writing cannot be put in place. Moreover, prior to a collection of data, a data processor or controller must first assess the data protection impact whereby the impact of the planned processing operations on the protection of personal data is analyzed and studied. This must include an assessment of the potential risks to the rights and freedoms of individuals and envisage measures to address these risks by providing security mechanisms in case there is a breach.
Consequently, in the case of a breach, the data processor has a maximum of 72 hours to notify the breach to the Commissioner and the controller. Therefore, if the controller deems the breach to result in a high risk to the rights of the subject, the controller needs to notify the subject without delay with a clear and accurate communication exchange. This exchange is not required if appropriate and effective technical and organizational protection measures are put in place and the breach does not affect the subject.

Rights of Individuals regarding processing of their data

• Right to erasure
• Right to object to automated profiling
• Right to data portability
• Right to request data
• Right to rectification
• Right to restriction

By Bhurshita Seechurn, Josue Armance, Bhaveena D. Appadoo, Threeshika Napal and Khausar Hoota.

Less energy use equals to less pressure on energy converting companies to cater for increasing demand equals to less strain on natural resources. This simple equation is the basis of every reason why energy efficiency is a must in the 21st century.

‘Energy efficiency is a notion focusing on technology and enhanced productivity’ (Moezzi, 2000). Common practices range from simply changing halogen lighting to LED lighting to using electric vehicles for transportation. Energy efficiency is a phenomenon which cuts across various aspects, namely transportation, building design and more importantly, technology. However, with the emergence of high performance technologies comes the responsibility to be energy efficient.
The report looks at how technology, in its various forms, helps/could help in reducing the consumption of energy across the following sectors:

• Household sector
• Agricultural sector
• Transport sector

We also make a detour to analyse the concept of a paperless society and its impact on energy consumption in the long run.

Household sector
The Household sector is one where there is high consumption of energy. Indeed, with more and more people leaning towards household appliances such as dishwashers, refrigerators, air conditioner and washing machines- to mention merely a few out of too many-, the energy consumption at household level is bound to increase. In Mauritius, the energy observatory report conducted by the Energy Efficiency Management Office (EEMO) showed a growth in energy consumption of 1.6% from 2016 to 2017, and the highest source of energy was electricity, where again, the consumption increased by 2.1% in the same year. By default, this entails a greater effort on the part of multiple parties namely the Government, the manufacturers as well as the resellers of domestic appliances to bring forward the concept of energy efficiency in this area.

For household appliances manufacturers, there is a need to produce energy efficient models which cater to the growing demand by the consumers for such specificities. We look at the case of international domestic appliances maker, Candy.

Agricultural Sector
Farmcity
Founded in 2016, the farm was established on an enduring pledge to keep nutritious vegetables open to everyone, regardless of whether it involved working their horticultural unit at a misfortune. The plan of action was purposely constructed with the end goal that instructive project finances their expense of generation, so that their produce can be kept reasonable and the business suitable. Soon, they predict preventive social insurance and nourishment as the possible supplement to Farmcity’s administrations.

Every one of their harvests are developed normally, with no dangerous agrichemicals and they are developed under the TropicBird – their restrictive nursery worked for the tropics, just as in raised bed ranches loaded up with supplement rich soil that is overflowing with life. They endeavour to guarantee that these practices are working in participation with (and of advantage to) individuals and planet, frequently in direct complexity to the polluted and exploitative nature of ordinary farming. Have a look at the video to get an insight of Farmcity’s agricultural practices:

Transport Sector
Having a mean of transport has become a necessity nowadays, and the numbers of vehicles on the roads are increasing every year. In Mauritius, more than 568,879 registered vehicles were reported by the end of June 2019 (Stats Mauritius). Keeping in mind that its population is approximately 1.3 million people. According to the United States Environment Protection Agency, a typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Considering that Mauritius is a pretty small island, the amount of carbon emissions releasing into our atmosphere is immense.
Many car manufacturers across the world, such as Hyundai, Nissan, Toyota, among many others, have taken actions to make cars that produce less carbon such as hybrid and electric cars.

Hybrid Cars
A hybrid car has a regular engine, an electric motor and a battery and it works by combining a petrol with an electric motor. It is more ecological than other typical cars because it consumes less energy, thus emitting less C02 in the air. According to National Land Transport Authority, there are 7745 Honda hybrid cars and 4333 Toyota hybrid, which was registered from 2009 till September 2019 in Mauritius. BMW was in third place with 260 registered cars.

Electric Cars
Electric cars run at least partly on electricity and it uses electric motor powered by electricity from batteries or a fuel cell (device that converts chemical potential energy into electrical energy). It works when it is plugged into a charge point. Electricity is stored in rechargeable batteries that power electric motor. Those cars are usually more environment friendly than conventional cars in terms of greenhouse gas emissions as they have no exhaust emissions (Lester Lave, Chris Hendrickson and Francis Clay McMichael, 1995). However, the production and distribution of the energy used to charge them determined how clean they are to a country.

In Mauritius, the Central Electricity Board produces 40% of the country’s total power requirement from four thermal power stations and eight hydroelectric plants. The rest is bought by independent power producers, primarily from sugarcane industry which used bagasse and imported coal to generate electricity (export.gov). As the way Mauritius produces electricity is not ecologically appropriate, thus, having an electric car does not seem to be an environment friendly option.

Solar cars
With the advance of technology, solar cars are becoming slowly a reality as they are prototypes for now. They are a hybrid with electric cars with photovoltaic cells to convert energy from sunlight into electricity. With the increase interest in renewable and sustainable energy systems, sustainable transport is becoming more popular than ever. However, it is still inaccessible to the mass due to its expensiveness.

The case of Metro Express
While investigating about how technology is being used for a more sustainable environment, The Metro Express from the Transport sector field caught our attention. The introduction of Metro Express- Light Rail Transit System will contribute into preserving our environment and traffic congestion. Light rail or light rail transit (LRT) is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and metro systems, but higher capacity and higher speed than traditional street-running tram systems. Modern light rail technology is flexible and adaptable, and uses electrical energy to function instead of fuel. (Railsystem.net, 2019)

Paperless society
The climate benefits of reducing paper consumption are worthy of attention. For example, if the U.S cuts its office paper use by a mere 10%, greenhouse gas emissions would plummet by 1.45 million metric tons. This is equivalent to removing 280000 cars off the road for a year.

It’s interesting to see how new technology is constantly making its way into the Mauritian educational system in an attempt to improve the learning experience, all while promoting a sustainable future. Universities, colleges and schools are using computers and mobile devices in an attempt to create a paperless classroom; they implement different approaches when it comes to putting the paperless classroom in place.

The Sankoré project, an initiative implemented in primary schools targeting students from Grade 4 to Grade 6, brings to life the idea of a digital classroom with the help of an interactive projector, a laptop and an infrared pen. Universities make use of free online resources such as Moodle and Google Classroom to promote a more digitalised, sustainable and environment-friendly education.
Computerising and digitising has definitely had a positive impact on the Mauritian education system. But, this is only a small step towards a paperless society. Even banks are gradually implementing online banking platforms such as Juice by the Mauritis Commercial Bank which has greatly facilitated the idea of internet banking on our island.

However, our health sector is still deeply engaged in archaic paper-based processes. Digitising and computerising everything would enable the Mauritian hospitals not only to be more productive, but to reduce significantly the over-consumption of paper.

La déforestation est un des facteurs provoquant le changement climatique à Maurice. Selon un article de « Ecology and Society », la déforestation a provoqué d’importantes érosions dans l’ile. Durant les années 1850 la déforestation était courante à cause de la colonisation. Cela a causé la perte de forêts tropicales dans l’ile.

Malheureusement, cette pratique néfaste pour l’écosystème perdure encore à ce jour. Maurice fait maintenant face à la perte massive de forêts de mangroves. Cette perte qui contribue à l’augmentation du niveau de la mer. Des études démontrent que cela pourrait éventuellement être périlleux pour les zones côtières dans un premier abord et finir par inonder l’ile.

Fabiola Monty spécialiste de l’environnement chez «DIS-MOI» nous donne plus de détails dans cette entrevue.

Selon l’International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), il y aurait un besoin urgent d’investir dans des solutions environnementales afin de réduire les risques de désastres naturels dans le futur. En 2016, la déforestation a battu son record mondial avec la perte de 30 millions d’hectares de forêts, qui représente le double du rythme des années précédentes. Cette tendance contribue hélas à perte de la bio-diversité dans le monde.

La spécialiste de l’environnement explique que l’abattage des chauves-souris par exemple, est néfaste pour la biodiversité.

D’après la spécialiste, même s’il existe des tentatives de reboisement, les forêts plantées ne peuvent compenser la perte des forêts naturels. Selon elle, la restauration des forêts devrait être une priorité afin de lutter contre ce problème environnemental.

À noter que selon un article publié par la Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation, plus de 300 plantes endémiques mauriciennes en voie de disparition, viennent d’être rapatriées à Maurice après qu’elles aient été envoyées au Conservatoire Botanique National de Brest, en France, il y a 40 ans pour les sauver de l’extinction.

2019 a connu de nombreux accidents de routes graves coutant la vie à de nombreuse personne. Maurice compte plus d’une cinquantaine d’accidents de route à ce jour depuis le début de l’année. La situation n’a pas évolué depuis l’an dernier. Les chiffres démontrent que l’année 2018 a été aussi bien meurtrière sur nos routes. On note 141 morts pour l’année 2018. Toutefois, rien que pour les sept premiers mois de l’année dernière, on dénombrait 99 morts, contre 69 morts en 2017. Dans un interview de l’inspecteur Matthur accordé à Télé Plus, ce dernier met en cause les sorties arrosées et l’imprudence des automobilistes.

Cependant des mésures ont été prises récemment afin de réduire cette tendance meurtrière. En décembre 2018, une programme de formation a été mis en place afin de sensibiliser les plus jeunes. Le Ministère du Transport a tenté de former les enseignants des établissements primaires dans un premier abord, les établissements secondaires restent un projet d’avenir. Par ailleurs, en 2018, il y a aussi eu un amendement de La Road Traffic Act incluant ainsi 204 délits. Le montant des amendes a été revu pour des délits tels que l’excès de vitesse. Ceux qui prennent le volant sans permis ou ceux qui prennent la route après que leur permis ait été suspendu devront payer une amende de Rs 50 000 à Rs 100 000.

Plusieurs campagnes de sensibilisation ont été mises en place afin de lutter contre ce problème de société. En janvier de l’année dernière, une campagne sous le thème «Ensam Pa Les Koltar Touy Nou Fami» a été initié par le conseil des ministres dans le cadre de réduire le nombre d’accidents de la route.

Toutefois, aucune de ces mesures de préventions mises en place ne pourra réduire le nombre d’accidents sans qu’elles soient respectées et appliquées par les usagers de la route. Chacun devrait en faire un devoir de respecter et d’appliquer ces mesures de prévoyance. De simples gestes responsables tels que: ne pas prendre d’alcool au volant, ne pas utiliser son téléphone portable au volant ou même respecter la limite de vitesse imposée peut éviter de graves accidents.

The documentary involved the participation of my Journalism students as part of a broadcast and digital journalism module which I teach in Year 2 of the BSc Journalism and BSc Communication Studies programmes. I produced the final cut with the assistance of my lab officer Manav Ramsokul.

Many thanks to IOM for this interesting opportunity, to all the persons who agreeed to speak on camera and to the Journalism students for their participation!

Introduction

A political campaign is a set of political activities that people carry out over a period of time (in order to achieve something such as social or political change) which seeks to influence the decision-making process of people within a specific group.

“In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, wherein representatives are chosen or referendums are decided. In modern politics, the most high-profile political campaigns are focused on candidates for head of state of government, often a President or Prime Minister.”
– Definitions.net

Digital campaigns have become prominent. With the introduction of new media, political campaign strategies of political parties, candidates and political organizations have faced a wave of changes. The new media has been able to reshape election media coverage and influence voter engagement. With the introduction of new media, we have been able to witness 6 types of Ads.

Types Of Ads

Ad type #1 Introduction
These types of ads are expected from the political campaigns right from the beginning of the race. As the name itself suggests, this ad is like an introductory ad where the candidate will describe his or her background qualifications as well as the reasons for running for the elections. The candidate in this ad becomes the main subject.

Ad type #2 Endorsements
“An endorsement video is the hallmark of any campaign that is trying to identify and belong to a larger party or group of political actors.”

Ad type #3 Positive
In this type of ad, the candidate will be seen addressing an issue in the society or the district. They will be talking about their issue positions or background and it is mainly in front of an environment typical of their district.

Ad type #4 Negative
(Source: Future Mauritius on Facebook)
In this type of ads, negative light is shed on the campaigns of the opposite political parties. The main message of this type of ad is, “Do not vote for X candidate.” these types of ads mainly use red or dark colors to create that negative image.

Negative Ads

Ad type #5 Citizen Testimonials
(Source: Mopays.com on Facebook)
This type of ad is not like an endorsement ad. In this type of ad, ordinary Mauritians are used to talk in favor of the candidate. This type of ads reaches people better because people are able to associate themselves with the “ordinary Mauritian” talking about struggle stories that the candidate will fight against.

Citizen Testimonials

Ad type #6 The Future of Campaign Advertising
Everyone has adopted this trend of digitization. Even politicians are making use of Instagram live and Snapchat to carry forward their campaign. This clearly shows that even though television will remain the foundation for any ad campaigns, soon, every type of digital screen will host political appeals.

Advantages of Using a 2.0 Campaign

Greater Target Audience Reach
Social media platforms offer greater visibility to political parties as compared to traditional media. Many traditional media companies are now embracing the digital wave which benefits even more politicians during campaigns as they participate in live shows, important posts and events are often reposted by major media groups ensuring them more visibility. In Mauritius according to statistics, more than 750,000 people have a social media account and approximately the same amount of people have access to the internet. Accessibility and democratization of the internet and news meant that more news is consumed online rather than in traditional forms of media.

The above figure shows a comparison of followers of media printed media groups online who are likely to see their articles online as compared to their newspaper readership in 2017.

Accessibility
According to statistics from World Internet Stats more than 800,000 Mauritians were connected to the internet either by broadband of mobile phones. This represents 65% of the population. According to statistics Mauritius, connectivity among the youth, age 12-19 was 87% in 2016. During the same year, Statistics Mauritius reported that 87.3% of the population owned a mobile phone.

Internet usage statistics in Mauritius

Social Media statistics in Mauritius

Cost of Ads/Promotion
One of the major advantages of 2.0 campaigns is that it costs less than traditional media. Most of the political campaign was done on social media where politicians/campaign teams can create profiles and pages free of cost. These profiles are used to post information and other relevant communication from the candidate. Candidates can also choose to target specific audiences at a much lower cost as compared to traditional media. Many of the alliances also used advertising means on, websites and YouTube at a lower cost than traditional media. These ads allow politicians to target specific people based on information Facebook / Google has about its users.

Facebook’s option to boost and promote content.

The cost of advertising at prime hours (maximum target audience) on different platforms.
Metrics and Tracking

Metrics and Tracking
The ability to track and break down the numbers of a page or post is a major advantage of new media. As compared to traditional media, political campaigners can now have access to information such as the number of interactions on post and assess how well they are doing. This is critical as it allows to instantly change strategies if need be as the numbers are easily available. There is also the opportunity to give instant feedback from the target audience. Metrics also gives political analysts a lot of information.

Different relevant information provided by Facebook to track page/post-performance

The number of like of the 4 main party leaders in Mauritius

Most like post on Facebook from the 4 biggest party leaders in Mauritius

Wider Posts Variety
Unlike traditional media, new media gives opportunity to political candidates to communicate with their audience through different forms. During the campaign social media platforms have been flooded with written posts, graphically illustrated posts, videos as well as Facebook lives.

Different types of posts (multimedia) post on Facebook

Similarities and Differences between Political Parties

The main political parties for the Elections 2019 were the Mouvement Socialiste Militant (MSM), the Labour Party (PTR; French: Parti Travailliste) and the Mouvement Militant Mauricien. All three parties organized political campaigns with much ardor to be unique in disseminating their ideas. However, after scrutinizing the social media posts of these politicians, one can discern that they have done some similar campaigns.

Similarities:

These are political campaigns run on Facebook where both politicians are portrayed as earnest human beings. In these pictures, the pens are used as an epitome of seriousness, knowledge, and intellectual. When an audience sees the pictures, it tends to associate the political leaders to these attributes and qualities.

Besides, in the above pictures, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth and Mr Navin Ramgoolam are depicted as the family man. The pictures have been carefully chosen by the campaign manager so that it has an impact on the mind of the audience. The aim here is to have a psychological effect on the audience. Humans are emotional beings and are easily influenced by feelings attached to something. For instance, here the audience is guided by the emotions attached to the pictures.

Furthermore, another common aspect of the campaigns of the MSM and the Labour Party is the engagement with the elderly as shown below. Both political leaders designed campaigns that will target the old people directly. By doing so, they want to send out the message that their focus is not only on the youth and middle age population but also on the elderly. Through these campaigns, they announced measures that will be in favor of the elders.

Moreover, the leader, Mr Navin Ramgoolam and two other candidates, Mr Xavier Luc Duval and Mr Adrien Charles Duval of the Labour Party ran comparable campaigns where these individuals are illustrated as compassionate human beings. This is so as they are pictured with dogs that are considered men’s best friend. For instance, Adrien Charles Duval is characterized as a noble human being as he is accompanied by dogs that he adopted. He also voices out about animal abuse at the MSAW and measures that will be taken to halt cruelty. As for Xavier Luc Duval, he stressed on the measures that the Labour Party would implement in favour of stray dogs and animals as shown above.

As the saying goes “A picture is worth a thousand words”, this picture is intended to have an emotional impact in the minds of the audience. The quote and words used in this social media post have been thoughtfully chosen by the campaign manager so that it arouses emotions among the audience.

Differences
Besides, the leader, Mr Paul Raymond Berenger and the candidate, Joanna Berenger of the Mouvement Militant Mauricien, have done political campaigns from an ecologist perspective as the focal point in the environment. In the pictures above, it can be deduced that the candidates of the MMM want to reduce the carbon footprint in the world. The chart illustrates initiatives that can be taken to stop pollution. Post elections, Jonna Berenger and her team organized a cleaning day in the constituency number 16 which is around Vacoas and Floreal. One can conclude that the measures taken by the MMM were environment-friendly.

Domestic violence is a severe threat for many women. Thus, another interesting aspect of the campaign run by the MMM is promoting gender equality. This campaign is in favor of female who are victims of domestic violence and those who lost their lives due to this barbarism. The main target of this campaign is the female population of the country. Such campaigns may arouse feelings mostly among women and girls.

Politics is about communication and an election campaign is a game of influences through communication. If the politician manages to create an opinion in his favor in the head of a person, it is because he has acquired the vote of it. And the best way than to touch this person was through the social networks available on his mobile phone that remains in his possession and that he/she consults several times a day.
From what has been observed, almost every political parties were very much present on social media networks, each communicating with the audience differently.
Almost all political parties had a Facebook page, through which they conveyed convey the party’s “messages”.

The page of L’Alliance Nationale, for example, contained the announced election manifesto while on the page of the Mouvement Socialist Mauricien (MSM), members could attend the Prime Minister’s speeches live at the various conferences in which he participates, thanks to Facebook’s “Live” option. As for the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), it took the interventions of its candidates in various media and regularly posted images of words with ‘MMM’ in it.
Examples below:

For traditional parties, each constituency also has its own page, feeding, almost daily, with photos of the door-to-door exercises of their candidates. Programs surrounding the meetings are also announced. Big announcements of the parties were included on the pages, as well as members could watch live, the interventions of the candidates doing meetings.

As for the candidates of each party, they also created their own Facebook page through which they communicated with their supporters through photos or videos. Be it mainstream parties, small parties or independent candidates, they all made it a must to have a Facebook page and a social media presence.
As we might have noticed, most of the pages of the candidates or parties appeared on our feeds through sponsored ads on almost all social networks, be it Facebook, YouTube or Instagram.

While applications were growing everywhere. The MSM, launched its own – called Ensam, on October 2. The goal: show the projects implemented by the government or the ones it hopes to achieve as soon as possible, among others. Around 5,000 people had downloaded the app.

Ensam is a user-friendly application where one can access to latest updates and news about the on-going work of the Prime Minister, his government and his party. There is also a survey section where users can interact with the Prime Minister through feedbacks and surveys. Ensam has been rated 4.6/5 and it is to be noted that it has a total of 107 likes.

In the opposite camp, l’Alliance Nationale also launched its own app where it announced the measures they wished to implement and presented their candidates. The app got over 1000 downloads.

As mentioned before, each political party had its own Facebook page, through which they communicated with their audience. Below are the number of likes of those pages:

Talking about the 2019 electoral campaign and not mentioning the independent candidate Oliver Thomas would be an incomplete analysis.
At 26 years, he decided to present himself as an independent candidate for the elections way before Pravind Jugnauth announced the date of the elections.
He used his mobile phone, clicked pictures and shot videos, through which he communicated with his audience. Soon, he got a wider audience who started following him and point to be noted, he did not create any sponsored post. His page was organically reaching Facebook users. His campaign started months before the official announcement of the election date

The 2.0 a boon for small parties?

New media have big implications for political practices. They have radically changed the ways in which political parties operate and communicate. They have changed the way elections are being done, and how citizens engage themselves in politics. New media, such as websites, blogs, video-sharing platforms, digital apps, and social media, are continually expanding in innovative ways. New media has introduced an increased level of instability and unpredictability in to the political communication process. This is why many small parties in Mauritius which were not covered by traditional media such as radio or television or the press make use of the internet for their political campaigns. New media such as social network can even reach disinterested audience members through personalized, peer-to-peer channels, like Facebook. Using facebook, youtube, websites are vital for small parties as it is the only way for them to reach maximum people compared to other big parties which were covered by traditional media.

The use of social media in politics, including Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube has changed the way campaigns are run and how Mauritian especially youngsters interact with elected officials. The prevalence of social media in politics has made elected officials and candidates more accountable and accessible to voters. And the ability to publish content and broadcast it to millions of people instantaneously allows campaigns to carefully manage their candidates’ images at almost no cost. This is a big advantage for small political parties which do not have much money to invest in their campaigns. 

Facebook has become instrumental in organizing campaigns for newborn parties. They allow voters and activists to easily share news and information such as campaign events with each other. That’s what the “share” function on Facebook. The small parties can check the people who are following them on social media and customize their messages based on selected demographics. This enables them to reach maximum people and their target audience is mainly young people who surf more on the internet, on social media than listening to the radio or watching news on T.V. A campaign may find one message appropriate for voters under 30 years old will not be as effective with those over 60. Also, what is good for small parties is that they obtain feedback from their audience. It can also be a very bad thing, depending on how politicians respond. Having feedback enables them to change and adapt their messages or campaigns according to what the audience asks for. Today on Facebook people can “react” on a post to show their emotions: whether they like, love, complete disagree or angry, chocked. Through these new “reactions”, the political parties can have accurate feedback on people’s perceptions of what is being said. Facebook have energized younger voters, which, in turn, had a profound impact on elections. In Mauritius, Facebook is the most used network among youth for political information compared with other social networks such as Twitter or Instagram. This is why small parties chose young candidates and use facebook as their main source of media. The Internet and social media provide an opportunity to the young population for political discussion through various online groups, pages, and accounts.

In Mauritius, small parties depend a lot on social networks such as facebook and youtube. Facebook enables them to make “direct” during their meeting so as people can follow them lively and can still watch it after. As they do not have t.v coverage, they shared a lot of videos, photos and direct on facebook or youtube. 

Below are a few examples of how small parties use new media for promotion and diffusion of information.

PKM: Parti Kreol Mauricien

A newborn political party that targets mainly youngsters. Their facebook page is open to any user and thus anyone can interact, share video, photos and give feedback. 

Is it a good or bad thing that anyone can interact? Actually, on their facebook page, there is no publication from the administrator. Most of the publications come from the candidates and the public. They also send private messages to the members of the facebook page which can not always work properly. When surfing on their page, we can conclude that there is no official administrator of the page that has control on the publications etc. The main work is being done by the public or the candidates.

Mouvement Mauricien Social Democrate – MMSD 

Here are some examples of how MMSD make use of social media to put forward their candidates, leader, and campaign. What is good to notice is that Facebook is free they can post as much as they want, but do they know how to use it to get the attention of maximum of people? These small parties do not have traditional media to announce their meeting so what they do is to use new media, the Internet to pass the message. 

Lalit 

They have a facebook page and a website. Compared to the other small parties, Lalit Mauricien has a website so that even those who are not facebook users can have access to information concerning their campaign and candidates. But still, the website is not updated on a regular basis!

Causes for worry?

The campaign for the 2019 elections was relentless with unfiltered content being posted all over social media. These posts and articles online violated multiple sections of the Criminal Code of Mauritius like publishing fake news or any other content which may cause ethnic unrest. While recent amendments have been made to the Information and Communication Technologies to protect users online, many shortcomings have been noticed during this campaign. The fact that the police often cannot open an inquiry unless there is a complaint from a citizen has to be reviewed. The number of information websites for means party propaganda has played an important role in these elections. Lastly, constitutional rights such as the right of privacy have been violated as well as banking secrets leaked. Should there be a greater legal reform for the future?

Personal bank details of Dr. Navin Ramgoolam revealed.

Dr. Navin Ramgoolam warning voters about fake News.

Global Trends
The world’s biggest democracies are finding it hard to deal with the issues of a 2.0 campaign. With the U.S elections allegedly interfered with by Russian hacking many democracies are now working closely with Google and Social Media platforms to halt the diffusion of fake news and educate people on how to detect real from fake news. New York senate representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently questioned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg if the platform was going to take down false and unverified information. Twitter on its side has taken the pledge to suspend political advertisement on its platform.

Facebook and Google asked to suspend political ads.

Twitter announces it will suspend political ads

Influence of live streaming on political campaign

• • Live streaming refers to the process of how the online streaming media is recorded concurrently and broadcast in actual time of the event to allow to the viewer to see it using their media devices such as laptop, mobile phones, tablets and television.
  • The process alone has the power to distribute the same video on a global scale to reach the target viewers which can count in terms of millions or even billions.

Live streaming (alongside social media) and political campaigns
With the rise of live streaming video, this means that people have started watching the news happen as it occurs. On the one hand, political campaigns now have a whole new means of information distribution to worry about. On the other, social media, and live streaming in particular, is the most easily controlled way of getting your message to the public in history.

With modern technology, including social media (for instance, Facebook), it is now possible to attend virtual events where you can participate in live streaming events and interact with politicians and candidates.

While reporters and campaigns rush to adopt live streaming apps to broadcast directly from the campaign trail using their phones and other devices, groups that specialize in political tracking and dirt-digging are investing in the technology to share video footage they can use to degrade the opposition. When you are the first source of information — whether it is feeding clips to the press or posting on social media — you have the best chance of framing that news to fit your interests

Facebook Live Stats

• The Facebook Live video view count climbed to 2 billion viewers last year.
• In 2017, 1 out of every 5 Facebook videos was a live broadcast.
• In 2018, the number of Facebook Live broadcasts reached 3.5 billion.
• The daily watch time for Facebook Live broadcasts quadrupled in a single year.
• Facebook Live videos produce 6 times as many interactions as traditional videos.
• Facebook Live videos get 10 times more comments than regular videos.
• Facebook Live’s search popularity increased by 330% in just one year
• Facebook Live users watch FB Live videos 3 times longer than pre-uploaded videos

We’ve come to the very end of our hand-picked Facebook Live stats. Some of the most important stats to keep in mind include, first of all, the rapid growth of FB Live broadcasts, which climbed to 3.5 billion last year. Secondly, the new video format from Facebook is used in various forms ranging from Q&A interviews to how-to content. Lastly, live video isn’t going anywhere, and the future of social media will most likely be all about video content, both pre-recorded and live.

When Live-Streaming bumps up against Freedom of Speech and Censorship
https://www.wsj.com/video/facebook-live-the-need-to-censor-violence/AD152739-E823-4409-81A3-34C7BC74608B.html

Citizen Journalism
With the mushrooming of internet users, high broadband connections and affordable technological devices, people from all around the world are being exposed to a pool of free information, messages and other contents. “Nowadays we are living in a world that has become radically interconnected, interdependent and communicated in the formations and flows of the media.” (Stuart Allan). The process of reading and sharing is becoming common, and so is freedom of expression. Due to this, online users can express their opinions or views about topics or internet content that interest them.

Similarly, millions of users are playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information. This practice is known as citizen journalism. The growing trend in citizen journalism, also known as public journalism, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, journalism by ordinary people on the street, is adding a new dimension to the way local, national and international news is presented.

Different schools regarding citizen journalism
One of the main questionable area of this phenomenon is whether this ‘new journalism’ will take over traditional journalism. Journalism, as every other profession, has set(s) of rules, regulations, laws and important basic ethical procedures to be respected. These practices are often neglected in citizen journalism. Some of the main critics are:

1. Objectivity – are citizen journalists providing objective news, that is content which is free from their personal beliefs and views?
2. Quality – are the news contents shared by citizen journalist well researched, written or expressed, and shared?
3. Accuracy – are the news content accurate, reliable and valid?
4. Truthfulness – are the news content free from the ideologies of ‘fake news’?

While some might believe that social media is replacing journalism and subsequently killing off professional and traditional journalism, others (including me) believe that citizen journalism can and does support professional journalism, not kill it. Professional journalist get their sources and information from most of citizen journalist and are actually an advantage to their profession.

Tiktok Phenomenon

TikTok, a Chinese iOS and Android social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos, was launched in 2017 by Chinese developer ByteDance. On 23 January 2018, the TikTok app ranked number one among free mobile app downloads on app stores in Thailand and other countries. TikTok employs artificial intelligence to analyse users’ interests and preferences through their interactions with the content, and display a personalized content feed to each user. In Mauritius, TikTok has been identified by the National Computer Board (NCB) Computer Emergency Response Team Mauritius (CERTMU) recently. The recent boom of this application has made the headline of local newspapers in 2019. On social media, several videos are circulated, outside the Tiktok application, which questions the privacy of this application. The Security Alert, released on September 23, pointed out that cyberbullying cases are rising in Mauritius.

Indeed, this application is an open platform for users to efficiently express their talent and encourage the entertainment and leisure time, however the dark sides of it remains an alarming concern. Hence, it is advised to make a positive use of this and users should be careful of what they are creating and/or sharing as their videos are not 100% protected.

Streaming videos vs Television

• Streaming videos are becoming more and more popular.
• You Tube, Netflix and online podcasts are examples of streaming media.
• Streaming videos has started during the mid-2000s. You Tube was the first platform (launched in 2005) to allow video sharing, a few years later Amazon was the first one to introduce streaming in 2006 and not Netflix as a lot of person seem to believe.
• There seems to be a war going on between streaming videos and cable television.
• Television still occupy the first place although streaming videos is getting more and more popularity through the years. the latest survey conducted by Nielsen’s published the 08/05/2019 affirmed that ‘As of May 2019, 134.2 million (56%) of U.S. adults streamed non-linear video (new media/streaming video) to their TV set through an internet-connected device or smart television. Compared with just two years ago, 40 million more Americans are streaming content to their TV sets.
• The most popular streaming platfoms includes Netflix, Freeform, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu.
• Streaming tv can be considered as a cultural phenomenon as it is transforming the society culturally, individuals no longer watch or consume content the same way compared to ten years back. Streaming videos are borderless.
• Streaming videos have also changed the family that is long ago watch TV was considered as some bonding time although the concept has remained the same that is to entertain but with streaming videos family has become fragmented, instead of gathering to watch the Tv, each watches their favorite shows on one of the many devices. Streaming videos are ecological as well, according to research, streaming a movie requires 78% of the energy it takes to ship a physical copy.
• Another aspect of streaming media and how it is changing our society is on the political level, streaming videos has somehow democratized the political scene, for instance the launching of the Parliament TV in Mauritius has allowed Mauritians to watch the political debate going on each week without no interruptions or editing, this somehow contributes to what is called participatory democracy.
• During the political campaign of this year the media website ‘Défimedia’ broke his audience records during this last month. (https://www.defimedia.info/defimediainfo-bat-son-record-daudience).
• Streaming videos are replacing fundraising tv shows. Monday 23th September 2019, a live streaming game created by a company known as ‘ZeratoR’ has collected 3.5 euros for a charity. Video link: (https://techno.konbini.com/fr/gaming/z-event-ledition-2019-entre-dans-lhistoire-en-recoltant-35-millions-deuros/)
• Another app known as Games Done Quickly (GDQ) organizes online event to raised fund for charities.
• In an article published by the magazine Forbes, it has been argued that telethon barely exists and is disappearing from the media stage and are being replaced by live streaming videos and gaming to raise funds for charity.

Differences between local channels/satellite channels and online streaming
The data below is according to statistics Mauritius:
The number of mobile cellular phone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants increased from 145.4 to 151.6.The number of internet subscriptions per 100 inhabitants went from 98.7 to 107.1.

Internet Usage in Mauritius
In 2018, International Bandwidth usage increased to 151.0 Gbits/s from 96.3 Gbits/s in 2017.
The usage per inhabitant reached 119,318 bits per second from 76,124 in 2017,
According to ITU, Mauritius ranked first among African countries and 72nd out 176 countries worldwide in terms of ICT development in 2016.
This let us suggest that the number of people having access to streaming videos is increasing. Data is mostly consumed nowadays. All improvement sin Mauritius has led our country to consume content on platforms like Facebook, web, YouTube etc.
However, it can be seen that elders tend to be the majority to consume data on TV, whether being local or international channels. When asking them why they do so, they simply argue that they have difficulties when surfing on the Web to look for content to watch. Many are not computer literate. They don’t understand how streaming works. Some gave as reasons that they have always watch content from TV and don’t want to change their habits. They are already used to TV and enjoy watching their soap operas at a specific time.

My.T channel
Was launched in late 2013
It operates via FTTH and offers various packages
There are 50 basic My.T channels which are offered (with options to be upgraded to about 95 channels)

Canal+
It is the leader in the digital pay market in Mauritius. There are no statistics available but however it has been seen from the net and personal interviews that out of 10 people 7 were Canal+ users.

MBC
It is a governmental television
Its programs are broadcasted in 12 languages (which is convenient to people speaking different languages). Out of 10 people, 3 people were watching MBC.

Mauritius – Households with television

Households with television (%) in Mauritius was reported at 96.88 % in 201

Mauritius – Fixed broadband Internet subscribers

Fixed broadband Internet subscribers in Mauritius was reported at 212600 in 2016

Mauritius – Mobile cellular subscriptions

Mobile cellular subscriptions in Mauritius was reported at 1814000 in 2016

Mauritius – Mobile and fixed-line telephone subscribers

Mobile and fixed-line telephone subscribers in Mauritius was reported at 1668700 in 2011

The Netflix phenomenon
Doing some research, I came across a blog called “Noulakaz”. Where according to the unofficial Netflix online Global search, Mauritius is ranked 136th world wide with a percentage of 15.3% (approx.) of users.
What encourages people to use Netflix is the cost which is very low – about Rs360 per month and also its fluidity.
However, all contents are not available in Mauritius that is why the fees are not so expensive.
Some people enjoy the programs/films/series/documentary available on Netflix as they will never see these on local channels in Mauritius. Even when watching channels like Canal+ you will find yourself watching the same thing over and over again because of this system of diffusing it several times over a period of one month.

Conclusion
We can say that the statistics in Mauritius is balanced, we see that majority of elderly people prefers watching old traditional media whereas youngsters prefer consuming data from live streaming videos like on local radios (private and public). News is broadcast and they have access to it more easily. Even for watching movies they prefer watching movies on the net. Many issues have been reported on local channels so they prefer investing in apps like Netflix or even freely on the net than to pay for watching the same things over and over again. Elders prefers to stick to it as some are less use to it.

Images source: World Bank

International influencers

The phenomenon of earning money online through social media and other platforms has reached the whole world. In each country, we can see people trying to use the psychology of influence to make engaging art and change lives.
This phenomenon does not have any barrier. Even age cannot stop people from being influencers.

Ryan’s World

For example, a 7 year old boy generated $22 million by reviewing toys on his YouTube page.

This young boy has 22.5 million subscribers to his YouTube account. According to Forbes magazine, his YouTube account was the highest grossing among all accounts. He generated $22 million in revenue, double of what he earned the previous year where he was only 8th of highest grossing YouTube accounts.
The account began when Ryan, then a 4-year-old fan of toy-review videos, asked his parents if he could also review toys on YouTube. Ryan ToysReview started out slowly until a July 2015 video went viral. The video featured Ryan opening and reviewing a box containing more than 100 toys from Pixar’s “Cars” series. It has close to 935 million views.

His latest video titled “How to Make DIY Craw Machine from Cardboard!!!” was posted on 10^th November 2019 and as of 13.32 on the 12^th November 2019, he already had 2,125,121 views. To this day, this young lad has a grand total of 33,656,318,037 views on YouTube.

 This kid is not stopping anytime soon.

Zoella

Gender is also no barrier to the phenomenon. Several women are major actors in the influencers industry.

Zoe Elizabeth Sugg, better known as Zoella is a British fashion vlogger. She was born on March 28, 1990 in Lacock. A 19 year old Zoella started her blog zoella280390, dedicated to beauty and fashion, in February 200Collecting a thousand followers by year end—while employed by English fashion brand New Look—the blog metamorphosed into YouTube’s Zoella. On YouTube, Zoella has 11.6 million subscribers for a total view count of 1,113,291,735 as of 12th November 2019.

According to Spears magazine, her net worth is $2.5 million dollars. As per CelebsNow, YouTube vloggers earn approximately ‘£0.0007 per view’ and Sugg’s channels draw 22 million clicks per month on average, equating to monthly earnings of £15,000. CelebsNow also reported that her written blog Zoella.co.uk makes around £4,000 per month from ads, with approximately 7.4 million clicks each month.

According to CelebsNow and Superdrug, Sugg’s beauty line has sold around £1,430,000 worth of products. Overall, brand Zoella has reportedly earned £3,884,338 in the last one year.

Sugg has written blog has recorded over 540 million clicks as of September 2015, while views for Zoella have crossed 663 million (over 9.9 million subscriber base). MoreZoella claims over 290 million clicks (subscriber list: 3.4 million plus). Her Twitter following is over four million and Instagram, seven million. Zoella has an approximate viewership of 12 million a month.
Inking a two-book deal with Penguin boosted by a £100,000 advance in 2014, Girl Online, her first novel, was launched on November 25, 2014. Selling 78,109 copies in the first week, it broke the record for highest sales by a debut author (beating Fifty Shades of Grey and even Harry Potter).
Zoella is an example of female influencers who have made it on their own.

Zoella has 9.6 million followers on Instagram.

Logan Paul

Logan Paul is among the highest grossing male influencer in the world. Logan Alexander Paul was born on the 1st April 1995. HE is an American You Tuber, internet personality and actor known for his YouTube video content. As well as posting on his own YouTube channel.

The 24 year old has 20 million subscribers on YouTube with 4,756,655,709 total views as of 12th November 2019.

He started his YouTube channel on the 28th August 2015. According to nailbuzz.com the vlogging channel, Logan Paul Vlogs, has over 20 million subscribers growing by over 2,000 new subs daily and has accumulated over 5 billion views so far. This one gets an average of 1.6 million views per day which should generate an estimated revenue of around $6,400 per day ($2.3 million a year) from ads that appear on the videos.
Logan makes extra income from his acting career and sponsorship deals. He has appeared in shows like Law & Order, Weird Loners, Stitches, Bizaardvark and Walk the Prank. His web series outside his YouTube channel include Logal Paul vs, and Bad Weather Films. He also sells his merchandise called Maverick Merch on his website which is estimated to generate an annual revenue of over $10 million. He also made a lot of millions from his fight with KSI which is said to have been watch by 773,000 people who paid $10 each to watch the stream.

Baddiewinkle

Influencers also do not have any age. This is best exemplified by Helen Winkle, better known on social media as baddiewinkle.

Helen Ruth Elam was born on 18th July 1928 at Hazard, Kentucky. She is an American internet personality. She became an Internet sensation at the age of eighty-five. Her social media tag line—”Stealing Your Man Since 1928″—has become a popular saying for teens and young adults. She is characterized by wearing eccentric clothes, promoting the legalization of medical marijuana, and her innuendo. She has millions of followers and views on social media, where she posts photos and videos of herself, often with suggestive clothing with peculiar prints, or little clothing. She shot to social media fame last year when her great-granddaughter, 19-year-old Kennedy Lewis, posted a photo of Winkle in cut-off jean shorts and a tie dyed shirt on Instagram. She has attracted some pretty famous followers, like Miley Cyrus, Nicole Richie and Gwen Stefani.

Winkle can make up to $5,000 for a paid post on Instagram. Baddiewinkle’s net worth stands at $1.3 million as of 2018

Local Influencers

Mauritius is also being caught by the influencers’ phenomenon. Mauritians had so many chances to grasp the moments but probably they never realized. Now they are maximizing their talents and being influencers. Some like Raju Birion are going down the tried and tested way of comedy but others are going for more unexplored territories like Nehal Mohabeer who tries his hand at gaming. Through this report, we are going to profile these neo-influencers and show how Mauritians lack nothing in terms of talents.

El Mehsen Khan

El Mehsen, the talented make-up artist who can do mostly any
transformation with his magical touch and brush stokes. Being
the talk of the town, this young passionate of art is not only a
make-up artist but also a fashion and model influencer. With his
aestetic touch, his artistic imagination and creativity, this young
man created a name for himself in the make-up industry
through his determination and creative side.

The now famous make-up artist of the M.A.C showroom of bagatelle
was a topper at Arts during his college days and loved playing with
colours. Being so agile and clever with paint, the artist decided to try
mixing colours of a make-up palette. It was in 2007, where the artist
was only 13 years old that he did his first trial on his mother which
turned out to be a masterpiece. Moreover, his first bridal make-up was
done on his bestfriend for her wedding.

From fairy wolrd to digital world               

It all started in 2008 where El Mehsen posted a first picture on
social media. The number of views,
likes and comments kept
increasing as he updated his
pages with his creativity.
Furthermore, he claims that
nothing pushed him to work
online but now, everything is done
through the internet. This tool
helps him a lot to keep in touch
with his fans and followers, and to
communicate more effectively
with his clients, and for bookings
purposes.

Social Media’s impact on his life

Always having great feedbacks on his social media platforms, the
artist with magical hands now has 6K followers on his Instagram and
nearly 7K followers on his Facebook page. Being an influencer in the
same area of his daily job is simply wonderful as he wants to inspire
people with his unique style. Moreover, he claims that in 2007, there
was no such focus on make up and could not be portrayed easily due
to lack of technological tools. Nowadays, make-up is everything and
technology has made everything much better and easier.

El Mehsen claims that he obtains contracts based on his works
portrayed online as being an influencer is part of his daily life. You can
easily get a glimpse of what he posts through his stories and feeds.
All you need to do is to search for Mehsen_artistry and click the
follow button to enter his colourful and unique world.

Everyone has dreams to            
accomplish and El
Mehsen wants to be on
international platforms
to showcase his work. He
is indeed a very friendly
person who is always
ready to talk and give
some advice when it
comes to make-up.

Raju Birion

Mauritian, Raju Birion is a young and fresh graduate from the University of Mauritius and has a very interesting hobby, which is to make people laugh. He is very well known in Mauritius as well as in other countries through his entertaining videos. Seems extrovert but is quite shy, yet, he always tries to spread happiness everywhere he goes. He was, at the beginning, a simple young man with a Facebook account where he would upload various interesting posts, which would interest many of his friends. Later, he started making videos on snapchat and suddenly he is famous for his great sense of humor!

Factual review of Joseph Guy Vincent Duvergé

Vincent history

In 2012, Vincent Duvergé created a YouTube channel where he regularly posted comedy clips that he produced with his best friends Yann Charlotte and David André. The channel encountered its first big success after he released a parody.

In January 2014, Vince Duvergé flies to Australia to study cinematography. During his studies he was awarded at the Kogarah Film Festival with Best Actor, Best Script and Best Film awards.

Young comedian, director and producer, Vincent started vlogging right from the year 2012. He became the most watched YouTube comedian of Mauritius in 2013 especially the Miss Mauritius vlog with a record of 184,801 views on YouTube 6 years ago.

Figure1: Vincent Channel

Before his career to One TV, Vincent Duvergé developed a series of videos in his early twenties. Each 100,000 views, Vincent gets a total amount of 100$. Starting with his personal channel on YouTube, Vincent did the maximum to achieve a good number of viewers. It can be clearly noted that with the use of new media Vincent has proved that a Mauritian vlogger can stand out and make a difference.

At its most basic level, influence can be estimated by examining the size of a person’s social networks, such as Facebook connections or YouTube subscribers’ especially local Mauritian bloggers, which is very minim. To a more thorough analysis, Vincent keeps having an increase of followers as people tend to keeping up regularly with his relatable videos to day-to-day issues and trends.

Vincent Duvergé’s videos has helped
him immensely in shaping his future and
gaining more exposure through new
media and hence securing a job
establishing a new strategy at One TV,
Radio One, thus increasing the number
of subscribers hereafter.
The young man has found a way
of gaining remuneration with his YouTube videos.

Wa, Man. Zafr la local

The YouTube Channel “Wa Man” has been recently created this year, precisely on 15 March 2019. The director of the channel is a young man named Ayush Ajoodhea and the producer is Prashin Lutch. The videos’ purpose is mainly based upon entertainment related content. Since the creation of the YouTube channel, it has gained 2,522,247 views and has 34.5K subscribers upon this date, 14th November 2019.

Our team gets in touch with Ayush through Instagram’s private message and asks him some questions about the “Wa Man” YouTube channel. The young man tells us that his passion for videography begins in 2017 and that it was his new year’s resolution for 2019 to be a YouTuber. He is fully concentrating his time in making the videos, as it is his full time job. He is remunerated by google through ads and asking about an approximate amount of what he gets and if it is sufficient for his living, he prefers not to say anything about it by replying “no comments” for his own privacy.

Inside “Wa man” is a video that aims at showing viewers what is happening behind the scenes. It shows the efforts that are put together in the objective of satisfying the viewers’ needs and expectations. The video is informative and highlights the daily struggles which a YouTuber may face.

Their main target audience are primarily adolescents. Youngsters often see themselves as being rebel and like to associate their social identity to extreme contents that include using vulgarity and sex related contents. There is always a need for adrenaline through experiments and challenges by young people. This is also illustrated in the videos. Here are some examples of the type of videos that are proposed by “Wa Man”.

Mauritius has many people who use their different talents on social media platforms and are major influencers in their fields of specialization.

Nehal Mohabeer

Nehal Mohabeer is a 19 year old, who has a YouTube channel which focus on mobile gaming. His contents are related to the popular game, “PUBG- Player Unknown’s Battle Ground”. His channel’s name, BBC NEHAL has been created May 21, 2013 and has 197,830 views and 3.12K subscribers in total. He is not getting any money from it and does it out of passion and as leisure time. His aim is to enhance the gaming experience and PUBG community in Mauritius.

Oliver Thomas

Oliver Thomas is a young man of 26 years old who was an independent candidate at the 20th constituency for the 2019 legislative. He has a diploma in Marketing from Charles Telfair Institute and a certificate in Political Studies from l’institut Cardinal Jean Margéot. He decided not to take the traditional path for his political campaign and instead chose to use digital platforms. He created a YouTube channel where he posted videos of him in his constituency and showed people why he deserves a shot to be elected from there. His total of 1,286,119 views on YouTube as of 14th November 2019 helped him get 3890 votes for the legislatives, which was roughly 12.13% of total voters. This shows that his way of using digital platforms certainly helped him in a big way.

Visham Ramdoo

Javesh Visham Ramdoo is one of the most popular and recognizable face in the entertainment industry in Mauritius. He has a very strong social media presence with over 783,594 total views on YouTube, nearly 44,000 followers on Facebook and more than 10,000 followers on Instagram. Visham started out by imitating famous people like “Mami Kloune” and his passion drew him to do videos. Now he is a comedian, humorist, singer, voice impersonator and animator. He generates revenue from his social media presence but also through shows and events. As of now, he has done more than 400 shows. He has shared the stage with various others celebrities like Alain Ramanisum in collaborations. In addition, he endorses brands like Jetha Tulsidas.

Jochen Kirstätter

Jochen Kirstätter, also known as “Joki” is a software craftsman, blogger, community founder and speaker. He was awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Developer Technologies as well as Visual Developer for Visual FoxPro in the past. He also founded the now largest IT community in Mauritius, Google Developer Group Mauritius. He also has a big blogging presence with over 400 articles on various IT topics on his blog “Get Blogged by JoKi.”

Nalini Aubeeluck

Nalini Aubeeluck is the director and choreographer of the Nalini Dance Group. She recently received an award in the prestigious competition, The Outstanding Young Person 2009, organised by Junior Chamber of Commerce. She anchored various well-known TV shows and presented the weather forecast at peak time on the National TV channel, Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation. She was a member of jury for the famous national dance competition Dance Fever.  She had the female lead role in the successful feature film LONBRAZ KANN that has been acclaimed in different film festival around the world. She also has her own clothing brand FAITH. This woman has a big social media presence with over 22,000 followed on Facebook.

Om Lombard

Om Lombard is an international model based in Mauritius. He created a French Bio Organic Traditional Bakery in Mauritius : La Provencal Boulangerie. At the end of 2010, he created his own FASHION BRAND: OM MY GOD!! With his first shop in Grand Bay. He has a strong social media presence with his followers amounting to 255k on Facebook and 142k on Instagram.

Anne Murielle Ravina

Anne Murielle Ravina has had a dream run in the world of fashion. She was 1st crowned Miss Uom, which opened the doors for her to be to participate in Miss Mauritius. She won the crown of Miss World Mauritius 2018 and was 2nd Miss World Africa in China. She is an ambassador for Global Rainbow Foundation and Rodrigues Tourism and her posts on social media are followed closely by her loyal fanbase.

Conclusion

Investopedia defines big data as “the large, diverse sets of information that grow at ever-increasing rates. It encompasses the volume of information about user’s autobiography and often comes from multiple sources. Big data can also be categorized as structured or unstructured.
Big data is collected from social media platforms and websites, through product purchases, electronic check-ins, locations, interests and questionnaires. Big data has its importance in the marketing area mainly as it has the potential to provide companies with profitable insights into their customers. These further enable marketers to refine marketing campaigns maximize customer engagement and conversion rates.
The realm of big data is a million dollar generating business considering how it is an important tool used in the marketing industry to affect the decision making of people. More often internet users receive an advertisement in mail or online that is quite relevant to their situation or their interest. Today there are over 4,000 data brokering companies worldwide that sell these data to leading companies across the world which explains the relevancy of advertisements to users. Acxiom is one of the largest data brokering companies in the world has over 23,000 servers that collect and analyze data for 500 million consumers worldwide.
Every search is monitored by data brokering companies and the information will be sold to companies so that they can create online ads to catch the attention of the user.
Now data brokering is a 200 million dollar industry.

Issues related to Big Data

Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying takes place over digital devices and can occur through SMS, Text, and apps, or online in social media, forums, or gaming where people can view, participate in, or share content like photos, messages, or pages that don’t get taken down, even the person has been asked to do so. It includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Some cyberbullying crosses the line into unlawful or criminal behaviour.
Cyberbullying statistics (2019) worldwide reveal alarming facts about virtual harassment, its impact, and the many different shapes and forms it can take.

Examples of Cyberbullying cases are:

• Tyler Clementi: A shy 18-year-old university freshman with a passion for playing the violin, jumped to his death from the George University Bridge.
• Ryan Halligan: He committed suicide on the 7th October 2003 where they found that he was humiliated by peers at school and online

The Mauritian Cybercrime Online Reporting System (MAUCORS) is a national online system that allows the public to report cybercrimes occurring on social media securely. It also provides advices to help recognizing and avoid common types of cybercrimes which takes place on social media websites.
Mauritius amends Information and Communication Technologies Act (ICTA) to include clause to impress heavy sentences for online messages that may be considered aggravating. Here is a screenshot showing a case of bullying which happens in Mauritius; a young man, Atish Ramnaraynan who died because of cyberbullying.

The screenshots below are some examples of cyberbullying and this is happening in Mauritius where we can see in the comment sections where people are attacking the TikTok users Arjoon and his cousin Deepti on their physical appearances which is part of online bullying.

Interconnectedness- Connecting phones to PCs
An important word that we need to know is ‘Tethering’ which means connecting two things, which is basically used for sharing the data connection of our smartphone to PC or Laptop.
This feature enables us to share information from one device to another but connecting phones to PCs/Laptops has its drawbacks. This gives the possibility to have full access to your information and beyond. How is that possible? It can be done by a legacy system of commands called AT-commands which can be used by attacker to get your phone number and downloads the contacts which are stored in the SIM card.
A lot of information are being exchanged between two devices which include phones name, the manufacturer as well, the serial number, file system, etc. So, hacker break into a smart-phone and take control of it and that’s why as mentioned above, there is a risk of data loss and driving balance to red.

Malwares & Virus
Malware is designed to cause trouble by gaining access to your device. It does not only having access to your information but sometimes it is made to steal information.
Computer can become infected in several ways. Firstly, by clicking on links to malicious sites in email messages and on messages on social media. Confidential data such as passwords are a key target of cybercriminals. Data lost and theft can occur because of malwares. The damage caused by a successful attack that erases a user’s data can be measured in terms of the value of the erased information to the user. The often neglected way to prevent data loss is by taking regular backups.

Hacking
The aim of hackers is to exploit computers illegally to steal people’s data. Hackers usually parse breach information that already exist for passwords, usernames, and emails and try to reuse those data on famous websites. Hackers use the ‘checker’ scripts, created for test batches of username: password combinations on specific websites to verify available accounts. These scripts exist for any service and are regularly updated and move within the hacker community.
Some famous hackers are:
Kevin Mitnick: He is the CEO, Team Leader, and Chief White Hat Hacker and the most popular one worldwide. Before being a trustworthy security consultant to Fortune 500 and governments around the world, he belong to the list of the FBI’s Most Wanted as he hacked into 40 big corporations. Also, he was the “most wanted computer criminal in United States history.”
Ankit Fadia: Ankit Fadia, an Indian “ethical hacker”, whose work usually include proxy websites and lifestyle, OS and networking based tips and tricks. The latter gives online certified Ethical hacking course.
Garry McKinnon: The hacker hacked 97 US military to gather data and the NASA regarding UFOs more than a decade ago.

Data breach
A data breach is the intended or unintended release of secure or private or confidential data to an environment which is not trustworthy.
Linkedln
Linkedln’s 167,370,910 accounts were hacked in June 2012, leaking emails and passwords. This illegal act was committed by Brandon Charles Glover and Vasile Mereacre, the one who hacked Uber.
Google+
In 2019, a bug in Google+ Exposed 500,000 users’ information for about 3 years. The bug had revealed users’ name, age, email address, occupation and some profile information shared secretly among users that should not have been obtainable. Google+ allowed an investigation to take place regarding this matter.
The Guardian revealed that Google decided to shut down user accessibility to Google+ after solving the bug to maintain their image and identity as well as ameliorate privacy protections.
However, Facebook is among the first names that crops up when the issue of data privacy is cropped up. The major leak of information is mainly through Third-Party apps.According to a study made by Na Wang, Heng Xu and Jens Grosslags, the privacy threats associated with the use of Third-Party apps on Facebook as affirmed by a Wall Street Journal that found out that numerous Third-Party apps on Facebook are extracting identifiable user information from the platform and sharing this bounty with advertising companies. There are more than 30 billion pieces of content (links, news, stories, posts, notes, photos) which is shared on Facebook on which users interact with over 900 million objects each month. By the end of the research, it became obvious that a large number of users’ personal information are being transmitted from Facebook to external entities.
Moreover, in Facebook’s Privacy Settings for apps or instant games, users can control the information sharing between them and other applications which were signed in using Facebook. Access to some information categories can be denied, however, there are some fields that cannot be denied access and are marked as “required” by Facebook as shown below:

It was also noted that there is insufficient reflection of the data requested. As an example, “Access my photos” was used to see whether the dialog would truly give the Third-Party app’s information practices. However, the dialog fails to demonstrate how by a simple “User photos” permission, the real information that the app could access is not limited to the shared photos as the permission enables the app to access all albums objects the user has created. Below is a chart of all the information that can be accessed by a simple “User Photos” permission.

Link between Cambridge Analytica and Campaign 2.0
Cambridge Analytica made headlines in March 2018 after a whistleblower came forward with some revelations about the company. However, Cambridge Analytica also do data brokerage for political purposes during electoral campaigns in which it sells political parties data about individuals so that these political parties can create ads or run their campaigns around the behavioural pattern of the public.
In 2018, Cambridge Analytica has used Facebook as a way to harvest the personal information of people so that it can be used for political advertising motives. It was then, that the public became aware of how unprotected the data they put online was unprotected and how, if it gets in the wrong hands, can be used against them and their will. When it was first reported, Facebook refused to comment on it but rather said it was being investigated. Due to this breach of data, people were targeted with political ads which were personalized based on their personal information so that they can be manipulated for Donald Trump to be voted in the 2016 election. The data was obtained through a personality test app that was on facebook so that the data of people who used the app would be pulled out, this includes the information about what their friends liked without their consent. ‘thisismydigitallife’ was a creation of Global Science Research that was run by Cambridge-based academic Aleksandr Kogan which was quickly used by 320,000 by facebook users. The data of around 50 million users was harvested in just two months by accessing those users’ friends networks. This data gained allowed Trump to score an upset win against Hillary Clinton. Through that campaign, Trump used the data to spread narratives on social media aiming to ignite a culture war, suppress black voter turnout and exacerbate racist views by using the help of cambridge analytica to create online personalised ads.
We can observe similarities with the Mauritian Campaign 2.0 where the is the use of social media platforms for political campaigns. The rise of social media has made it possible for political parties to use them as a way to advertise about their motives and parties. Campaign 2.0 allows the political parties to have a strong presence online trying to influence the online users’ decisions during election period.

Safety Measures for Big Data
Referring to the Cambridge Analytica issue, we found that Mark Zuckerberg has listed some changes and updates concerning the protection of data and they are as follows:

• On 19th March 2018, a forensic audit of Cambridge Analytica and other parties that were involved in the misuse of date were being pursued.
• On March 21st, Facebook promised to investigate profoundly all apps that have access to large amounts of data and information through the platform, audit any suspicion activity and would ban any developer who misused personally identifiable information and data.
• On August 22, a spokeswoman stated that third party apps were being investigated and more than 400 were suspended.
• On the 1st of May, Facebook created the ‘clear history’ tool that would allow users to force Facebook to delete all the information that it gathers about users while the browse through the web. No information would be contained about any users who use the clear history tool.

Other than the safety measures that Facebook stated: a user has other ways of protecting his/her data online. The following are the types of safety measures that can be used to protect online data.

• Installing good anti-virus software capable of scanning HTTPS traffic can protect users from phishing attacks. The antivirus will be able to scan through encrypted web communication that will analyze the content of website a user has been browsing and it will try to identify patterns that can be linked to potential malicious websites.
• A user is advised not to open suspicious email, not to download pirated software and to access only e-commerce websites that support HTTPS. This will enhance the protection of their data online.
• Do not connect to unknown networks because those can perform middleman attacks against you by intercepting the sensitive data you transfer online.

Laws in Mauritius Regarding Data Privacy
A huge amount of information is being shared through online platforms, and a big proportion of this amount is about personal data. Mauritian citizens have the right to privacy which is expressed in Sections 3 and 9 of the Constitution of Mauritius and Article 22 of the Mauritian Civil Code.
The General Data Protection Regulation was published in the Official Journal of the EU in May 2016 and came into force on the 25th of May 2018. It a law with extraterritorial reach which protects privacy rights and has obligations for example, consent requirements, data breach notification, appointment of data processors and new processes. This means that the GDPR is relevant to Mauritius as it applies to every data controller and processor regardless of geographical location. Online actions such as sending marketing emails and adverts using big data have to comply with the GDPR and this led to some changes, for example, targeting adverts for baby products at someone who searches for “morning sickness” online may be unlawful profiling based on the collection of special category personal data. Purchase marketing lists also must be subject to critical scrutiny under the GDPR.
The Data Protection Act 2017 came into force on the 15th of January 2018. The role of the DPA 2017, is shaped by the principles of GDPR, that is to aim at protecting and safeguarding privacy rights of individuals during the processing and storing process. The missions of the Data Protection Act are to “ensure lawfulness, fairness and transparency such that individuals are well informed and afforded protection for the confidentiality of their personal data in order to reduce the growing risks of data leaks in an age of ‘e-society’.

According to these laws, a data subject must provide unambiguous consent and must express by a statement or a clear affirmative action to have their data be recorded and stored by any physical or virtual platform. Opting out also must be clear and simple, such as a checkbox and further barriers like confirm in writing cannot be put in place. Moreover, prior to a collection of data, a data processor or controller must first assess the data protection impact whereby the impact of the planned processing operations on the protection of personal data is analyzed and studied. This must include an assessment of the potential risks to the rights and freedoms of individuals and envisage measures to address these risks by providing security mechanisms in case there is a breach.
Consequently, in the case of a breach, the data processor has a maximum of 72 hours to notify the breach to the Commissioner and the controller. Therefore, if the controller deems the breach to result in a high risk to the rights of the subject, the controller needs to notify the subject without delay with a clear and accurate communication exchange. This exchange is not required if appropriate and effective technical and organizational protection measures are put in place and the breach does not affect the subject.

Rights of Individuals regarding processing of their data

• Right to erasure
• Right to object to automated profiling
• Right to data portability
• Right to request data
• Right to rectification
• Right to restriction

By Bhurshita Seechurn, Josue Armance, Bhaveena D. Appadoo, Threeshika Napal and Khausar Hoota.

Less energy use equals to less pressure on energy converting companies to cater for increasing demand equals to less strain on natural resources. This simple equation is the basis of every reason why energy efficiency is a must in the 21st century.

‘Energy efficiency is a notion focusing on technology and enhanced productivity’ (Moezzi, 2000). Common practices range from simply changing halogen lighting to LED lighting to using electric vehicles for transportation. Energy efficiency is a phenomenon which cuts across various aspects, namely transportation, building design and more importantly, technology. However, with the emergence of high performance technologies comes the responsibility to be energy efficient.
The report looks at how technology, in its various forms, helps/could help in reducing the consumption of energy across the following sectors:

• Household sector
• Agricultural sector
• Transport sector

We also make a detour to analyse the concept of a paperless society and its impact on energy consumption in the long run.

Household sector
The Household sector is one where there is high consumption of energy. Indeed, with more and more people leaning towards household appliances such as dishwashers, refrigerators, air conditioner and washing machines- to mention merely a few out of too many-, the energy consumption at household level is bound to increase. In Mauritius, the energy observatory report conducted by the Energy Efficiency Management Office (EEMO) showed a growth in energy consumption of 1.6% from 2016 to 2017, and the highest source of energy was electricity, where again, the consumption increased by 2.1% in the same year. By default, this entails a greater effort on the part of multiple parties namely the Government, the manufacturers as well as the resellers of domestic appliances to bring forward the concept of energy efficiency in this area.

For household appliances manufacturers, there is a need to produce energy efficient models which cater to the growing demand by the consumers for such specificities. We look at the case of international domestic appliances maker, Candy.

Agricultural Sector
Farmcity
Founded in 2016, the farm was established on an enduring pledge to keep nutritious vegetables open to everyone, regardless of whether it involved working their horticultural unit at a misfortune. The plan of action was purposely constructed with the end goal that instructive project finances their expense of generation, so that their produce can be kept reasonable and the business suitable. Soon, they predict preventive social insurance and nourishment as the possible supplement to Farmcity’s administrations.

Every one of their harvests are developed normally, with no dangerous agrichemicals and they are developed under the TropicBird – their restrictive nursery worked for the tropics, just as in raised bed ranches loaded up with supplement rich soil that is overflowing with life. They endeavour to guarantee that these practices are working in participation with (and of advantage to) individuals and planet, frequently in direct complexity to the polluted and exploitative nature of ordinary farming. Have a look at the video to get an insight of Farmcity’s agricultural practices:

Transport Sector
Having a mean of transport has become a necessity nowadays, and the numbers of vehicles on the roads are increasing every year. In Mauritius, more than 568,879 registered vehicles were reported by the end of June 2019 (Stats Mauritius). Keeping in mind that its population is approximately 1.3 million people. According to the United States Environment Protection Agency, a typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Considering that Mauritius is a pretty small island, the amount of carbon emissions releasing into our atmosphere is immense.
Many car manufacturers across the world, such as Hyundai, Nissan, Toyota, among many others, have taken actions to make cars that produce less carbon such as hybrid and electric cars.

Hybrid Cars
A hybrid car has a regular engine, an electric motor and a battery and it works by combining a petrol with an electric motor. It is more ecological than other typical cars because it consumes less energy, thus emitting less C02 in the air. According to National Land Transport Authority, there are 7745 Honda hybrid cars and 4333 Toyota hybrid, which was registered from 2009 till September 2019 in Mauritius. BMW was in third place with 260 registered cars.

Electric Cars
Electric cars run at least partly on electricity and it uses electric motor powered by electricity from batteries or a fuel cell (device that converts chemical potential energy into electrical energy). It works when it is plugged into a charge point. Electricity is stored in rechargeable batteries that power electric motor. Those cars are usually more environment friendly than conventional cars in terms of greenhouse gas emissions as they have no exhaust emissions (Lester Lave, Chris Hendrickson and Francis Clay McMichael, 1995). However, the production and distribution of the energy used to charge them determined how clean they are to a country.

In Mauritius, the Central Electricity Board produces 40% of the country’s total power requirement from four thermal power stations and eight hydroelectric plants. The rest is bought by independent power producers, primarily from sugarcane industry which used bagasse and imported coal to generate electricity (export.gov). As the way Mauritius produces electricity is not ecologically appropriate, thus, having an electric car does not seem to be an environment friendly option.

Solar cars
With the advance of technology, solar cars are becoming slowly a reality as they are prototypes for now. They are a hybrid with electric cars with photovoltaic cells to convert energy from sunlight into electricity. With the increase interest in renewable and sustainable energy systems, sustainable transport is becoming more popular than ever. However, it is still inaccessible to the mass due to its expensiveness.

The case of Metro Express
While investigating about how technology is being used for a more sustainable environment, The Metro Express from the Transport sector field caught our attention. The introduction of Metro Express- Light Rail Transit System will contribute into preserving our environment and traffic congestion. Light rail or light rail transit (LRT) is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and metro systems, but higher capacity and higher speed than traditional street-running tram systems. Modern light rail technology is flexible and adaptable, and uses electrical energy to function instead of fuel. (Railsystem.net, 2019)

Paperless society
The climate benefits of reducing paper consumption are worthy of attention. For example, if the U.S cuts its office paper use by a mere 10%, greenhouse gas emissions would plummet by 1.45 million metric tons. This is equivalent to removing 280000 cars off the road for a year.

It’s interesting to see how new technology is constantly making its way into the Mauritian educational system in an attempt to improve the learning experience, all while promoting a sustainable future. Universities, colleges and schools are using computers and mobile devices in an attempt to create a paperless classroom; they implement different approaches when it comes to putting the paperless classroom in place.

The Sankoré project, an initiative implemented in primary schools targeting students from Grade 4 to Grade 6, brings to life the idea of a digital classroom with the help of an interactive projector, a laptop and an infrared pen. Universities make use of free online resources such as Moodle and Google Classroom to promote a more digitalised, sustainable and environment-friendly education.
Computerising and digitising has definitely had a positive impact on the Mauritian education system. But, this is only a small step towards a paperless society. Even banks are gradually implementing online banking platforms such as Juice by the Mauritis Commercial Bank which has greatly facilitated the idea of internet banking on our island.

However, our health sector is still deeply engaged in archaic paper-based processes. Digitising and computerising everything would enable the Mauritian hospitals not only to be more productive, but to reduce significantly the over-consumption of paper.

La déforestation est un des facteurs provoquant le changement climatique à Maurice. Selon un article de « Ecology and Society », la déforestation a provoqué d’importantes érosions dans l’ile. Durant les années 1850 la déforestation était courante à cause de la colonisation. Cela a causé la perte de forêts tropicales dans l’ile.

Malheureusement, cette pratique néfaste pour l’écosystème perdure encore à ce jour. Maurice fait maintenant face à la perte massive de forêts de mangroves. Cette perte qui contribue à l’augmentation du niveau de la mer. Des études démontrent que cela pourrait éventuellement être périlleux pour les zones côtières dans un premier abord et finir par inonder l’ile.

Fabiola Monty spécialiste de l’environnement chez «DIS-MOI» nous donne plus de détails dans cette entrevue.

Selon l’International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), il y aurait un besoin urgent d’investir dans des solutions environnementales afin de réduire les risques de désastres naturels dans le futur. En 2016, la déforestation a battu son record mondial avec la perte de 30 millions d’hectares de forêts, qui représente le double du rythme des années précédentes. Cette tendance contribue hélas à perte de la bio-diversité dans le monde.

La spécialiste de l’environnement explique que l’abattage des chauves-souris par exemple, est néfaste pour la biodiversité.

D’après la spécialiste, même s’il existe des tentatives de reboisement, les forêts plantées ne peuvent compenser la perte des forêts naturels. Selon elle, la restauration des forêts devrait être une priorité afin de lutter contre ce problème environnemental.

À noter que selon un article publié par la Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation, plus de 300 plantes endémiques mauriciennes en voie de disparition, viennent d’être rapatriées à Maurice après qu’elles aient été envoyées au Conservatoire Botanique National de Brest, en France, il y a 40 ans pour les sauver de l’extinction.

2019 a connu de nombreux accidents de routes graves coutant la vie à de nombreuse personne. Maurice compte plus d’une cinquantaine d’accidents de route à ce jour depuis le début de l’année. La situation n’a pas évolué depuis l’an dernier. Les chiffres démontrent que l’année 2018 a été aussi bien meurtrière sur nos routes. On note 141 morts pour l’année 2018. Toutefois, rien que pour les sept premiers mois de l’année dernière, on dénombrait 99 morts, contre 69 morts en 2017. Dans un interview de l’inspecteur Matthur accordé à Télé Plus, ce dernier met en cause les sorties arrosées et l’imprudence des automobilistes.

Cependant des mésures ont été prises récemment afin de réduire cette tendance meurtrière. En décembre 2018, une programme de formation a été mis en place afin de sensibiliser les plus jeunes. Le Ministère du Transport a tenté de former les enseignants des établissements primaires dans un premier abord, les établissements secondaires restent un projet d’avenir. Par ailleurs, en 2018, il y a aussi eu un amendement de La Road Traffic Act incluant ainsi 204 délits. Le montant des amendes a été revu pour des délits tels que l’excès de vitesse. Ceux qui prennent le volant sans permis ou ceux qui prennent la route après que leur permis ait été suspendu devront payer une amende de Rs 50 000 à Rs 100 000.

Plusieurs campagnes de sensibilisation ont été mises en place afin de lutter contre ce problème de société. En janvier de l’année dernière, une campagne sous le thème «Ensam Pa Les Koltar Touy Nou Fami» a été initié par le conseil des ministres dans le cadre de réduire le nombre d’accidents de la route.

Toutefois, aucune de ces mesures de préventions mises en place ne pourra réduire le nombre d’accidents sans qu’elles soient respectées et appliquées par les usagers de la route. Chacun devrait en faire un devoir de respecter et d’appliquer ces mesures de prévoyance. De simples gestes responsables tels que: ne pas prendre d’alcool au volant, ne pas utiliser son téléphone portable au volant ou même respecter la limite de vitesse imposée peut éviter de graves accidents.

The documentary involved the participation of my Journalism students as part of a broadcast and digital journalism module which I teach in Year 2 of the BSc Journalism and BSc Communication Studies programmes. I produced the final cut with the assistance of my lab officer Manav Ramsokul.

Many thanks to IOM for this interesting opportunity, to all the persons who agreeed to speak on camera and to the Journalism students for their participation!

Introduction

A political campaign is a set of political activities that people carry out over a period of time (in order to achieve something such as social or political change) which seeks to influence the decision-making process of people within a specific group.

“In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, wherein representatives are chosen or referendums are decided. In modern politics, the most high-profile political campaigns are focused on candidates for head of state of government, often a President or Prime Minister.”
– Definitions.net

Digital campaigns have become prominent. With the introduction of new media, political campaign strategies of political parties, candidates and political organizations have faced a wave of changes. The new media has been able to reshape election media coverage and influence voter engagement. With the introduction of new media, we have been able to witness 6 types of Ads.

Types Of Ads

Ad type #1 Introduction
These types of ads are expected from the political campaigns right from the beginning of the race. As the name itself suggests, this ad is like an introductory ad where the candidate will describe his or her background qualifications as well as the reasons for running for the elections. The candidate in this ad becomes the main subject.

Ad type #2 Endorsements
“An endorsement video is the hallmark of any campaign that is trying to identify and belong to a larger party or group of political actors.”

Ad type #3 Positive
In this type of ad, the candidate will be seen addressing an issue in the society or the district. They will be talking about their issue positions or background and it is mainly in front of an environment typical of their district.

Ad type #4 Negative
(Source: Future Mauritius on Facebook)
In this type of ads, negative light is shed on the campaigns of the opposite political parties. The main message of this type of ad is, “Do not vote for X candidate.” these types of ads mainly use red or dark colors to create that negative image.

Negative Ads

Ad type #5 Citizen Testimonials
(Source: Mopays.com on Facebook)
This type of ad is not like an endorsement ad. In this type of ad, ordinary Mauritians are used to talk in favor of the candidate. This type of ads reaches people better because people are able to associate themselves with the “ordinary Mauritian” talking about struggle stories that the candidate will fight against.

Citizen Testimonials

Ad type #6 The Future of Campaign Advertising
Everyone has adopted this trend of digitization. Even politicians are making use of Instagram live and Snapchat to carry forward their campaign. This clearly shows that even though television will remain the foundation for any ad campaigns, soon, every type of digital screen will host political appeals.

Advantages of Using a 2.0 Campaign

Greater Target Audience Reach
Social media platforms offer greater visibility to political parties as compared to traditional media. Many traditional media companies are now embracing the digital wave which benefits even more politicians during campaigns as they participate in live shows, important posts and events are often reposted by major media groups ensuring them more visibility. In Mauritius according to statistics, more than 750,000 people have a social media account and approximately the same amount of people have access to the internet. Accessibility and democratization of the internet and news meant that more news is consumed online rather than in traditional forms of media.

The above figure shows a comparison of followers of media printed media groups online who are likely to see their articles online as compared to their newspaper readership in 2017.

Accessibility
According to statistics from World Internet Stats more than 800,000 Mauritians were connected to the internet either by broadband of mobile phones. This represents 65% of the population. According to statistics Mauritius, connectivity among the youth, age 12-19 was 87% in 2016. During the same year, Statistics Mauritius reported that 87.3% of the population owned a mobile phone.

Internet usage statistics in Mauritius

Social Media statistics in Mauritius

Cost of Ads/Promotion
One of the major advantages of 2.0 campaigns is that it costs less than traditional media. Most of the political campaign was done on social media where politicians/campaign teams can create profiles and pages free of cost. These profiles are used to post information and other relevant communication from the candidate. Candidates can also choose to target specific audiences at a much lower cost as compared to traditional media. Many of the alliances also used advertising means on, websites and YouTube at a lower cost than traditional media. These ads allow politicians to target specific people based on information Facebook / Google has about its users.

Facebook’s option to boost and promote content.

The cost of advertising at prime hours (maximum target audience) on different platforms.
Metrics and Tracking

Metrics and Tracking
The ability to track and break down the numbers of a page or post is a major advantage of new media. As compared to traditional media, political campaigners can now have access to information such as the number of interactions on post and assess how well they are doing. This is critical as it allows to instantly change strategies if need be as the numbers are easily available. There is also the opportunity to give instant feedback from the target audience. Metrics also gives political analysts a lot of information.

Different relevant information provided by Facebook to track page/post-performance

The number of like of the 4 main party leaders in Mauritius

Most like post on Facebook from the 4 biggest party leaders in Mauritius

Wider Posts Variety
Unlike traditional media, new media gives opportunity to political candidates to communicate with their audience through different forms. During the campaign social media platforms have been flooded with written posts, graphically illustrated posts, videos as well as Facebook lives.

Different types of posts (multimedia) post on Facebook

Similarities and Differences between Political Parties

The main political parties for the Elections 2019 were the Mouvement Socialiste Militant (MSM), the Labour Party (PTR; French: Parti Travailliste) and the Mouvement Militant Mauricien. All three parties organized political campaigns with much ardor to be unique in disseminating their ideas. However, after scrutinizing the social media posts of these politicians, one can discern that they have done some similar campaigns.

Similarities:

These are political campaigns run on Facebook where both politicians are portrayed as earnest human beings. In these pictures, the pens are used as an epitome of seriousness, knowledge, and intellectual. When an audience sees the pictures, it tends to associate the political leaders to these attributes and qualities.

Besides, in the above pictures, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth and Mr Navin Ramgoolam are depicted as the family man. The pictures have been carefully chosen by the campaign manager so that it has an impact on the mind of the audience. The aim here is to have a psychological effect on the audience. Humans are emotional beings and are easily influenced by feelings attached to something. For instance, here the audience is guided by the emotions attached to the pictures.

Furthermore, another common aspect of the campaigns of the MSM and the Labour Party is the engagement with the elderly as shown below. Both political leaders designed campaigns that will target the old people directly. By doing so, they want to send out the message that their focus is not only on the youth and middle age population but also on the elderly. Through these campaigns, they announced measures that will be in favor of the elders.

Moreover, the leader, Mr Navin Ramgoolam and two other candidates, Mr Xavier Luc Duval and Mr Adrien Charles Duval of the Labour Party ran comparable campaigns where these individuals are illustrated as compassionate human beings. This is so as they are pictured with dogs that are considered men’s best friend. For instance, Adrien Charles Duval is characterized as a noble human being as he is accompanied by dogs that he adopted. He also voices out about animal abuse at the MSAW and measures that will be taken to halt cruelty. As for Xavier Luc Duval, he stressed on the measures that the Labour Party would implement in favour of stray dogs and animals as shown above.

As the saying goes “A picture is worth a thousand words”, this picture is intended to have an emotional impact in the minds of the audience. The quote and words used in this social media post have been thoughtfully chosen by the campaign manager so that it arouses emotions among the audience.

Differences
Besides, the leader, Mr Paul Raymond Berenger and the candidate, Joanna Berenger of the Mouvement Militant Mauricien, have done political campaigns from an ecologist perspective as the focal point in the environment. In the pictures above, it can be deduced that the candidates of the MMM want to reduce the carbon footprint in the world. The chart illustrates initiatives that can be taken to stop pollution. Post elections, Jonna Berenger and her team organized a cleaning day in the constituency number 16 which is around Vacoas and Floreal. One can conclude that the measures taken by the MMM were environment-friendly.

Domestic violence is a severe threat for many women. Thus, another interesting aspect of the campaign run by the MMM is promoting gender equality. This campaign is in favor of female who are victims of domestic violence and those who lost their lives due to this barbarism. The main target of this campaign is the female population of the country. Such campaigns may arouse feelings mostly among women and girls.

Politics is about communication and an election campaign is a game of influences through communication. If the politician manages to create an opinion in his favor in the head of a person, it is because he has acquired the vote of it. And the best way than to touch this person was through the social networks available on his mobile phone that remains in his possession and that he/she consults several times a day.
From what has been observed, almost every political parties were very much present on social media networks, each communicating with the audience differently.
Almost all political parties had a Facebook page, through which they conveyed convey the party’s “messages”.

The page of L’Alliance Nationale, for example, contained the announced election manifesto while on the page of the Mouvement Socialist Mauricien (MSM), members could attend the Prime Minister’s speeches live at the various conferences in which he participates, thanks to Facebook’s “Live” option. As for the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), it took the interventions of its candidates in various media and regularly posted images of words with ‘MMM’ in it.
Examples below:

For traditional parties, each constituency also has its own page, feeding, almost daily, with photos of the door-to-door exercises of their candidates. Programs surrounding the meetings are also announced. Big announcements of the parties were included on the pages, as well as members could watch live, the interventions of the candidates doing meetings.

As for the candidates of each party, they also created their own Facebook page through which they communicated with their supporters through photos or videos. Be it mainstream parties, small parties or independent candidates, they all made it a must to have a Facebook page and a social media presence.
As we might have noticed, most of the pages of the candidates or parties appeared on our feeds through sponsored ads on almost all social networks, be it Facebook, YouTube or Instagram.

While applications were growing everywhere. The MSM, launched its own – called Ensam, on October 2. The goal: show the projects implemented by the government or the ones it hopes to achieve as soon as possible, among others. Around 5,000 people had downloaded the app.

Ensam is a user-friendly application where one can access to latest updates and news about the on-going work of the Prime Minister, his government and his party. There is also a survey section where users can interact with the Prime Minister through feedbacks and surveys. Ensam has been rated 4.6/5 and it is to be noted that it has a total of 107 likes.

In the opposite camp, l’Alliance Nationale also launched its own app where it announced the measures they wished to implement and presented their candidates. The app got over 1000 downloads.

As mentioned before, each political party had its own Facebook page, through which they communicated with their audience. Below are the number of likes of those pages:

Talking about the 2019 electoral campaign and not mentioning the independent candidate Oliver Thomas would be an incomplete analysis.
At 26 years, he decided to present himself as an independent candidate for the elections way before Pravind Jugnauth announced the date of the elections.
He used his mobile phone, clicked pictures and shot videos, through which he communicated with his audience. Soon, he got a wider audience who started following him and point to be noted, he did not create any sponsored post. His page was organically reaching Facebook users. His campaign started months before the official announcement of the election date

The 2.0 a boon for small parties?

New media have big implications for political practices. They have radically changed the ways in which political parties operate and communicate. They have changed the way elections are being done, and how citizens engage themselves in politics. New media, such as websites, blogs, video-sharing platforms, digital apps, and social media, are continually expanding in innovative ways. New media has introduced an increased level of instability and unpredictability in to the political communication process. This is why many small parties in Mauritius which were not covered by traditional media such as radio or television or the press make use of the internet for their political campaigns. New media such as social network can even reach disinterested audience members through personalized, peer-to-peer channels, like Facebook. Using facebook, youtube, websites are vital for small parties as it is the only way for them to reach maximum people compared to other big parties which were covered by traditional media.

The use of social media in politics, including Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube has changed the way campaigns are run and how Mauritian especially youngsters interact with elected officials. The prevalence of social media in politics has made elected officials and candidates more accountable and accessible to voters. And the ability to publish content and broadcast it to millions of people instantaneously allows campaigns to carefully manage their candidates’ images at almost no cost. This is a big advantage for small political parties which do not have much money to invest in their campaigns. 

Facebook has become instrumental in organizing campaigns for newborn parties. They allow voters and activists to easily share news and information such as campaign events with each other. That’s what the “share” function on Facebook. The small parties can check the people who are following them on social media and customize their messages based on selected demographics. This enables them to reach maximum people and their target audience is mainly young people who surf more on the internet, on social media than listening to the radio or watching news on T.V. A campaign may find one message appropriate for voters under 30 years old will not be as effective with those over 60. Also, what is good for small parties is that they obtain feedback from their audience. It can also be a very bad thing, depending on how politicians respond. Having feedback enables them to change and adapt their messages or campaigns according to what the audience asks for. Today on Facebook people can “react” on a post to show their emotions: whether they like, love, complete disagree or angry, chocked. Through these new “reactions”, the political parties can have accurate feedback on people’s perceptions of what is being said. Facebook have energized younger voters, which, in turn, had a profound impact on elections. In Mauritius, Facebook is the most used network among youth for political information compared with other social networks such as Twitter or Instagram. This is why small parties chose young candidates and use facebook as their main source of media. The Internet and social media provide an opportunity to the young population for political discussion through various online groups, pages, and accounts.

In Mauritius, small parties depend a lot on social networks such as facebook and youtube. Facebook enables them to make “direct” during their meeting so as people can follow them lively and can still watch it after. As they do not have t.v coverage, they shared a lot of videos, photos and direct on facebook or youtube. 

Below are a few examples of how small parties use new media for promotion and diffusion of information.

PKM: Parti Kreol Mauricien

A newborn political party that targets mainly youngsters. Their facebook page is open to any user and thus anyone can interact, share video, photos and give feedback. 

Is it a good or bad thing that anyone can interact? Actually, on their facebook page, there is no publication from the administrator. Most of the publications come from the candidates and the public. They also send private messages to the members of the facebook page which can not always work properly. When surfing on their page, we can conclude that there is no official administrator of the page that has control on the publications etc. The main work is being done by the public or the candidates.

Mouvement Mauricien Social Democrate – MMSD 

Here are some examples of how MMSD make use of social media to put forward their candidates, leader, and campaign. What is good to notice is that Facebook is free they can post as much as they want, but do they know how to use it to get the attention of maximum of people? These small parties do not have traditional media to announce their meeting so what they do is to use new media, the Internet to pass the message. 

Lalit 

They have a facebook page and a website. Compared to the other small parties, Lalit Mauricien has a website so that even those who are not facebook users can have access to information concerning their campaign and candidates. But still, the website is not updated on a regular basis!

Causes for worry?

The campaign for the 2019 elections was relentless with unfiltered content being posted all over social media. These posts and articles online violated multiple sections of the Criminal Code of Mauritius like publishing fake news or any other content which may cause ethnic unrest. While recent amendments have been made to the Information and Communication Technologies to protect users online, many shortcomings have been noticed during this campaign. The fact that the police often cannot open an inquiry unless there is a complaint from a citizen has to be reviewed. The number of information websites for means party propaganda has played an important role in these elections. Lastly, constitutional rights such as the right of privacy have been violated as well as banking secrets leaked. Should there be a greater legal reform for the future?

Personal bank details of Dr. Navin Ramgoolam revealed.

Dr. Navin Ramgoolam warning voters about fake News.

Global Trends
The world’s biggest democracies are finding it hard to deal with the issues of a 2.0 campaign. With the U.S elections allegedly interfered with by Russian hacking many democracies are now working closely with Google and Social Media platforms to halt the diffusion of fake news and educate people on how to detect real from fake news. New York senate representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently questioned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg if the platform was going to take down false and unverified information. Twitter on its side has taken the pledge to suspend political advertisement on its platform.

Facebook and Google asked to suspend political ads.

Twitter announces it will suspend political ads

Influence of live streaming on political campaign

• • Live streaming refers to the process of how the online streaming media is recorded concurrently and broadcast in actual time of the event to allow to the viewer to see it using their media devices such as laptop, mobile phones, tablets and television.
  • The process alone has the power to distribute the same video on a global scale to reach the target viewers which can count in terms of millions or even billions.

Live streaming (alongside social media) and political campaigns
With the rise of live streaming video, this means that people have started watching the news happen as it occurs. On the one hand, political campaigns now have a whole new means of information distribution to worry about. On the other, social media, and live streaming in particular, is the most easily controlled way of getting your message to the public in history.

With modern technology, including social media (for instance, Facebook), it is now possible to attend virtual events where you can participate in live streaming events and interact with politicians and candidates.

While reporters and campaigns rush to adopt live streaming apps to broadcast directly from the campaign trail using their phones and other devices, groups that specialize in political tracking and dirt-digging are investing in the technology to share video footage they can use to degrade the opposition. When you are the first source of information — whether it is feeding clips to the press or posting on social media — you have the best chance of framing that news to fit your interests

Facebook Live Stats

• The Facebook Live video view count climbed to 2 billion viewers last year.
• In 2017, 1 out of every 5 Facebook videos was a live broadcast.
• In 2018, the number of Facebook Live broadcasts reached 3.5 billion.
• The daily watch time for Facebook Live broadcasts quadrupled in a single year.
• Facebook Live videos produce 6 times as many interactions as traditional videos.
• Facebook Live videos get 10 times more comments than regular videos.
• Facebook Live’s search popularity increased by 330% in just one year
• Facebook Live users watch FB Live videos 3 times longer than pre-uploaded videos

We’ve come to the very end of our hand-picked Facebook Live stats. Some of the most important stats to keep in mind include, first of all, the rapid growth of FB Live broadcasts, which climbed to 3.5 billion last year. Secondly, the new video format from Facebook is used in various forms ranging from Q&A interviews to how-to content. Lastly, live video isn’t going anywhere, and the future of social media will most likely be all about video content, both pre-recorded and live.

When Live-Streaming bumps up against Freedom of Speech and Censorship
https://www.wsj.com/video/facebook-live-the-need-to-censor-violence/AD152739-E823-4409-81A3-34C7BC74608B.html

Citizen Journalism
With the mushrooming of internet users, high broadband connections and affordable technological devices, people from all around the world are being exposed to a pool of free information, messages and other contents. “Nowadays we are living in a world that has become radically interconnected, interdependent and communicated in the formations and flows of the media.” (Stuart Allan). The process of reading and sharing is becoming common, and so is freedom of expression. Due to this, online users can express their opinions or views about topics or internet content that interest them.

Similarly, millions of users are playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information. This practice is known as citizen journalism. The growing trend in citizen journalism, also known as public journalism, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, journalism by ordinary people on the street, is adding a new dimension to the way local, national and international news is presented.

Different schools regarding citizen journalism
One of the main questionable area of this phenomenon is whether this ‘new journalism’ will take over traditional journalism. Journalism, as every other profession, has set(s) of rules, regulations, laws and important basic ethical procedures to be respected. These practices are often neglected in citizen journalism. Some of the main critics are:

1. Objectivity – are citizen journalists providing objective news, that is content which is free from their personal beliefs and views?
2. Quality – are the news contents shared by citizen journalist well researched, written or expressed, and shared?
3. Accuracy – are the news content accurate, reliable and valid?
4. Truthfulness – are the news content free from the ideologies of ‘fake news’?

While some might believe that social media is replacing journalism and subsequently killing off professional and traditional journalism, others (including me) believe that citizen journalism can and does support professional journalism, not kill it. Professional journalist get their sources and information from most of citizen journalist and are actually an advantage to their profession.

Tiktok Phenomenon

TikTok, a Chinese iOS and Android social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos, was launched in 2017 by Chinese developer ByteDance. On 23 January 2018, the TikTok app ranked number one among free mobile app downloads on app stores in Thailand and other countries. TikTok employs artificial intelligence to analyse users’ interests and preferences through their interactions with the content, and display a personalized content feed to each user. In Mauritius, TikTok has been identified by the National Computer Board (NCB) Computer Emergency Response Team Mauritius (CERTMU) recently. The recent boom of this application has made the headline of local newspapers in 2019. On social media, several videos are circulated, outside the Tiktok application, which questions the privacy of this application. The Security Alert, released on September 23, pointed out that cyberbullying cases are rising in Mauritius.

Indeed, this application is an open platform for users to efficiently express their talent and encourage the entertainment and leisure time, however the dark sides of it remains an alarming concern. Hence, it is advised to make a positive use of this and users should be careful of what they are creating and/or sharing as their videos are not 100% protected.

Streaming videos vs Television

• Streaming videos are becoming more and more popular.
• You Tube, Netflix and online podcasts are examples of streaming media.
• Streaming videos has started during the mid-2000s. You Tube was the first platform (launched in 2005) to allow video sharing, a few years later Amazon was the first one to introduce streaming in 2006 and not Netflix as a lot of person seem to believe.
• There seems to be a war going on between streaming videos and cable television.
• Television still occupy the first place although streaming videos is getting more and more popularity through the years. the latest survey conducted by Nielsen’s published the 08/05/2019 affirmed that ‘As of May 2019, 134.2 million (56%) of U.S. adults streamed non-linear video (new media/streaming video) to their TV set through an internet-connected device or smart television. Compared with just two years ago, 40 million more Americans are streaming content to their TV sets.
• The most popular streaming platfoms includes Netflix, Freeform, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu.
• Streaming tv can be considered as a cultural phenomenon as it is transforming the society culturally, individuals no longer watch or consume content the same way compared to ten years back. Streaming videos are borderless.
• Streaming videos have also changed the family that is long ago watch TV was considered as some bonding time although the concept has remained the same that is to entertain but with streaming videos family has become fragmented, instead of gathering to watch the Tv, each watches their favorite shows on one of the many devices. Streaming videos are ecological as well, according to research, streaming a movie requires 78% of the energy it takes to ship a physical copy.
• Another aspect of streaming media and how it is changing our society is on the political level, streaming videos has somehow democratized the political scene, for instance the launching of the Parliament TV in Mauritius has allowed Mauritians to watch the political debate going on each week without no interruptions or editing, this somehow contributes to what is called participatory democracy.
• During the political campaign of this year the media website ‘Défimedia’ broke his audience records during this last month. (https://www.defimedia.info/defimediainfo-bat-son-record-daudience).
• Streaming videos are replacing fundraising tv shows. Monday 23th September 2019, a live streaming game created by a company known as ‘ZeratoR’ has collected 3.5 euros for a charity. Video link: (https://techno.konbini.com/fr/gaming/z-event-ledition-2019-entre-dans-lhistoire-en-recoltant-35-millions-deuros/)
• Another app known as Games Done Quickly (GDQ) organizes online event to raised fund for charities.
• In an article published by the magazine Forbes, it has been argued that telethon barely exists and is disappearing from the media stage and are being replaced by live streaming videos and gaming to raise funds for charity.

Differences between local channels/satellite channels and online streaming
The data below is according to statistics Mauritius:
The number of mobile cellular phone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants increased from 145.4 to 151.6.The number of internet subscriptions per 100 inhabitants went from 98.7 to 107.1.

Internet Usage in Mauritius
In 2018, International Bandwidth usage increased to 151.0 Gbits/s from 96.3 Gbits/s in 2017.
The usage per inhabitant reached 119,318 bits per second from 76,124 in 2017,
According to ITU, Mauritius ranked first among African countries and 72nd out 176 countries worldwide in terms of ICT development in 2016.
This let us suggest that the number of people having access to streaming videos is increasing. Data is mostly consumed nowadays. All improvement sin Mauritius has led our country to consume content on platforms like Facebook, web, YouTube etc.
However, it can be seen that elders tend to be the majority to consume data on TV, whether being local or international channels. When asking them why they do so, they simply argue that they have difficulties when surfing on the Web to look for content to watch. Many are not computer literate. They don’t understand how streaming works. Some gave as reasons that they have always watch content from TV and don’t want to change their habits. They are already used to TV and enjoy watching their soap operas at a specific time.

My.T channel
Was launched in late 2013
It operates via FTTH and offers various packages
There are 50 basic My.T channels which are offered (with options to be upgraded to about 95 channels)

Canal+
It is the leader in the digital pay market in Mauritius. There are no statistics available but however it has been seen from the net and personal interviews that out of 10 people 7 were Canal+ users.

MBC
It is a governmental television
Its programs are broadcasted in 12 languages (which is convenient to people speaking different languages). Out of 10 people, 3 people were watching MBC.

Mauritius – Households with television

Households with television (%) in Mauritius was reported at 96.88 % in 201

Mauritius – Fixed broadband Internet subscribers

Fixed broadband Internet subscribers in Mauritius was reported at 212600 in 2016

Mauritius – Mobile cellular subscriptions

Mobile cellular subscriptions in Mauritius was reported at 1814000 in 2016

Mauritius – Mobile and fixed-line telephone subscribers

Mobile and fixed-line telephone subscribers in Mauritius was reported at 1668700 in 2011

The Netflix phenomenon
Doing some research, I came across a blog called “Noulakaz”. Where according to the unofficial Netflix online Global search, Mauritius is ranked 136th world wide with a percentage of 15.3% (approx.) of users.
What encourages people to use Netflix is the cost which is very low – about Rs360 per month and also its fluidity.
However, all contents are not available in Mauritius that is why the fees are not so expensive.
Some people enjoy the programs/films/series/documentary available on Netflix as they will never see these on local channels in Mauritius. Even when watching channels like Canal+ you will find yourself watching the same thing over and over again because of this system of diffusing it several times over a period of one month.

Conclusion
We can say that the statistics in Mauritius is balanced, we see that majority of elderly people prefers watching old traditional media whereas youngsters prefer consuming data from live streaming videos like on local radios (private and public). News is broadcast and they have access to it more easily. Even for watching movies they prefer watching movies on the net. Many issues have been reported on local channels so they prefer investing in apps like Netflix or even freely on the net than to pay for watching the same things over and over again. Elders prefers to stick to it as some are less use to it.

Images source: World Bank

International influencers

The phenomenon of earning money online through social media and other platforms has reached the whole world. In each country, we can see people trying to use the psychology of influence to make engaging art and change lives.
This phenomenon does not have any barrier. Even age cannot stop people from being influencers.

Ryan’s World

For example, a 7 year old boy generated $22 million by reviewing toys on his YouTube page.

This young boy has 22.5 million subscribers to his YouTube account. According to Forbes magazine, his YouTube account was the highest grossing among all accounts. He generated $22 million in revenue, double of what he earned the previous year where he was only 8th of highest grossing YouTube accounts.
The account began when Ryan, then a 4-year-old fan of toy-review videos, asked his parents if he could also review toys on YouTube. Ryan ToysReview started out slowly until a July 2015 video went viral. The video featured Ryan opening and reviewing a box containing more than 100 toys from Pixar’s “Cars” series. It has close to 935 million views.

His latest video titled “How to Make DIY Craw Machine from Cardboard!!!” was posted on 10^th November 2019 and as of 13.32 on the 12^th November 2019, he already had 2,125,121 views. To this day, this young lad has a grand total of 33,656,318,037 views on YouTube.

 This kid is not stopping anytime soon.

Zoella

Gender is also no barrier to the phenomenon. Several women are major actors in the influencers industry.

Zoe Elizabeth Sugg, better known as Zoella is a British fashion vlogger. She was born on March 28, 1990 in Lacock. A 19 year old Zoella started her blog zoella280390, dedicated to beauty and fashion, in February 200Collecting a thousand followers by year end—while employed by English fashion brand New Look—the blog metamorphosed into YouTube’s Zoella. On YouTube, Zoella has 11.6 million subscribers for a total view count of 1,113,291,735 as of 12th November 2019.

According to Spears magazine, her net worth is $2.5 million dollars. As per CelebsNow, YouTube vloggers earn approximately ‘£0.0007 per view’ and Sugg’s channels draw 22 million clicks per month on average, equating to monthly earnings of £15,000. CelebsNow also reported that her written blog Zoella.co.uk makes around £4,000 per month from ads, with approximately 7.4 million clicks each month.

According to CelebsNow and Superdrug, Sugg’s beauty line has sold around £1,430,000 worth of products. Overall, brand Zoella has reportedly earned £3,884,338 in the last one year.

Sugg has written blog has recorded over 540 million clicks as of September 2015, while views for Zoella have crossed 663 million (over 9.9 million subscriber base). MoreZoella claims over 290 million clicks (subscriber list: 3.4 million plus). Her Twitter following is over four million and Instagram, seven million. Zoella has an approximate viewership of 12 million a month.
Inking a two-book deal with Penguin boosted by a £100,000 advance in 2014, Girl Online, her first novel, was launched on November 25, 2014. Selling 78,109 copies in the first week, it broke the record for highest sales by a debut author (beating Fifty Shades of Grey and even Harry Potter).
Zoella is an example of female influencers who have made it on their own.

Zoella has 9.6 million followers on Instagram.

Logan Paul

Logan Paul is among the highest grossing male influencer in the world. Logan Alexander Paul was born on the 1st April 1995. HE is an American You Tuber, internet personality and actor known for his YouTube video content. As well as posting on his own YouTube channel.

The 24 year old has 20 million subscribers on YouTube with 4,756,655,709 total views as of 12th November 2019.

He started his YouTube channel on the 28th August 2015. According to nailbuzz.com the vlogging channel, Logan Paul Vlogs, has over 20 million subscribers growing by over 2,000 new subs daily and has accumulated over 5 billion views so far. This one gets an average of 1.6 million views per day which should generate an estimated revenue of around $6,400 per day ($2.3 million a year) from ads that appear on the videos.
Logan makes extra income from his acting career and sponsorship deals. He has appeared in shows like Law & Order, Weird Loners, Stitches, Bizaardvark and Walk the Prank. His web series outside his YouTube channel include Logal Paul vs, and Bad Weather Films. He also sells his merchandise called Maverick Merch on his website which is estimated to generate an annual revenue of over $10 million. He also made a lot of millions from his fight with KSI which is said to have been watch by 773,000 people who paid $10 each to watch the stream.

Baddiewinkle

Influencers also do not have any age. This is best exemplified by Helen Winkle, better known on social media as baddiewinkle.

Helen Ruth Elam was born on 18th July 1928 at Hazard, Kentucky. She is an American internet personality. She became an Internet sensation at the age of eighty-five. Her social media tag line—”Stealing Your Man Since 1928″—has become a popular saying for teens and young adults. She is characterized by wearing eccentric clothes, promoting the legalization of medical marijuana, and her innuendo. She has millions of followers and views on social media, where she posts photos and videos of herself, often with suggestive clothing with peculiar prints, or little clothing. She shot to social media fame last year when her great-granddaughter, 19-year-old Kennedy Lewis, posted a photo of Winkle in cut-off jean shorts and a tie dyed shirt on Instagram. She has attracted some pretty famous followers, like Miley Cyrus, Nicole Richie and Gwen Stefani.

Winkle can make up to $5,000 for a paid post on Instagram. Baddiewinkle’s net worth stands at $1.3 million as of 2018

Local Influencers

Mauritius is also being caught by the influencers’ phenomenon. Mauritians had so many chances to grasp the moments but probably they never realized. Now they are maximizing their talents and being influencers. Some like Raju Birion are going down the tried and tested way of comedy but others are going for more unexplored territories like Nehal Mohabeer who tries his hand at gaming. Through this report, we are going to profile these neo-influencers and show how Mauritians lack nothing in terms of talents.

El Mehsen Khan

El Mehsen, the talented make-up artist who can do mostly any
transformation with his magical touch and brush stokes. Being
the talk of the town, this young passionate of art is not only a
make-up artist but also a fashion and model influencer. With his
aestetic touch, his artistic imagination and creativity, this young
man created a name for himself in the make-up industry
through his determination and creative side.

The now famous make-up artist of the M.A.C showroom of bagatelle
was a topper at Arts during his college days and loved playing with
colours. Being so agile and clever with paint, the artist decided to try
mixing colours of a make-up palette. It was in 2007, where the artist
was only 13 years old that he did his first trial on his mother which
turned out to be a masterpiece. Moreover, his first bridal make-up was
done on his bestfriend for her wedding.

From fairy wolrd to digital world               

It all started in 2008 where El Mehsen posted a first picture on
social media. The number of views,
likes and comments kept
increasing as he updated his
pages with his creativity.
Furthermore, he claims that
nothing pushed him to work
online but now, everything is done
through the internet. This tool
helps him a lot to keep in touch
with his fans and followers, and to
communicate more effectively
with his clients, and for bookings
purposes.

Social Media’s impact on his life

Always having great feedbacks on his social media platforms, the
artist with magical hands now has 6K followers on his Instagram and
nearly 7K followers on his Facebook page. Being an influencer in the
same area of his daily job is simply wonderful as he wants to inspire
people with his unique style. Moreover, he claims that in 2007, there
was no such focus on make up and could not be portrayed easily due
to lack of technological tools. Nowadays, make-up is everything and
technology has made everything much better and easier.

El Mehsen claims that he obtains contracts based on his works
portrayed online as being an influencer is part of his daily life. You can
easily get a glimpse of what he posts through his stories and feeds.
All you need to do is to search for Mehsen_artistry and click the
follow button to enter his colourful and unique world.

Everyone has dreams to            
accomplish and El
Mehsen wants to be on
international platforms
to showcase his work. He
is indeed a very friendly
person who is always
ready to talk and give
some advice when it
comes to make-up.

Raju Birion

Mauritian, Raju Birion is a young and fresh graduate from the University of Mauritius and has a very interesting hobby, which is to make people laugh. He is very well known in Mauritius as well as in other countries through his entertaining videos. Seems extrovert but is quite shy, yet, he always tries to spread happiness everywhere he goes. He was, at the beginning, a simple young man with a Facebook account where he would upload various interesting posts, which would interest many of his friends. Later, he started making videos on snapchat and suddenly he is famous for his great sense of humor!

Factual review of Joseph Guy Vincent Duvergé

Vincent history

In 2012, Vincent Duvergé created a YouTube channel where he regularly posted comedy clips that he produced with his best friends Yann Charlotte and David André. The channel encountered its first big success after he released a parody.

In January 2014, Vince Duvergé flies to Australia to study cinematography. During his studies he was awarded at the Kogarah Film Festival with Best Actor, Best Script and Best Film awards.

Young comedian, director and producer, Vincent started vlogging right from the year 2012. He became the most watched YouTube comedian of Mauritius in 2013 especially the Miss Mauritius vlog with a record of 184,801 views on YouTube 6 years ago.

Figure1: Vincent Channel

Before his career to One TV, Vincent Duvergé developed a series of videos in his early twenties. Each 100,000 views, Vincent gets a total amount of 100$. Starting with his personal channel on YouTube, Vincent did the maximum to achieve a good number of viewers. It can be clearly noted that with the use of new media Vincent has proved that a Mauritian vlogger can stand out and make a difference.

At its most basic level, influence can be estimated by examining the size of a person’s social networks, such as Facebook connections or YouTube subscribers’ especially local Mauritian bloggers, which is very minim. To a more thorough analysis, Vincent keeps having an increase of followers as people tend to keeping up regularly with his relatable videos to day-to-day issues and trends.

Vincent Duvergé’s videos has helped
him immensely in shaping his future and
gaining more exposure through new
media and hence securing a job
establishing a new strategy at One TV,
Radio One, thus increasing the number
of subscribers hereafter.
The young man has found a way
of gaining remuneration with his YouTube videos.

Wa, Man. Zafr la local

The YouTube Channel “Wa Man” has been recently created this year, precisely on 15 March 2019. The director of the channel is a young man named Ayush Ajoodhea and the producer is Prashin Lutch. The videos’ purpose is mainly based upon entertainment related content. Since the creation of the YouTube channel, it has gained 2,522,247 views and has 34.5K subscribers upon this date, 14th November 2019.

Our team gets in touch with Ayush through Instagram’s private message and asks him some questions about the “Wa Man” YouTube channel. The young man tells us that his passion for videography begins in 2017 and that it was his new year’s resolution for 2019 to be a YouTuber. He is fully concentrating his time in making the videos, as it is his full time job. He is remunerated by google through ads and asking about an approximate amount of what he gets and if it is sufficient for his living, he prefers not to say anything about it by replying “no comments” for his own privacy.

Inside “Wa man” is a video that aims at showing viewers what is happening behind the scenes. It shows the efforts that are put together in the objective of satisfying the viewers’ needs and expectations. The video is informative and highlights the daily struggles which a YouTuber may face.

Their main target audience are primarily adolescents. Youngsters often see themselves as being rebel and like to associate their social identity to extreme contents that include using vulgarity and sex related contents. There is always a need for adrenaline through experiments and challenges by young people. This is also illustrated in the videos. Here are some examples of the type of videos that are proposed by “Wa Man”.

Mauritius has many people who use their different talents on social media platforms and are major influencers in their fields of specialization.

Nehal Mohabeer

Nehal Mohabeer is a 19 year old, who has a YouTube channel which focus on mobile gaming. His contents are related to the popular game, “PUBG- Player Unknown’s Battle Ground”. His channel’s name, BBC NEHAL has been created May 21, 2013 and has 197,830 views and 3.12K subscribers in total. He is not getting any money from it and does it out of passion and as leisure time. His aim is to enhance the gaming experience and PUBG community in Mauritius.

Oliver Thomas

Oliver Thomas is a young man of 26 years old who was an independent candidate at the 20th constituency for the 2019 legislative. He has a diploma in Marketing from Charles Telfair Institute and a certificate in Political Studies from l’institut Cardinal Jean Margéot. He decided not to take the traditional path for his political campaign and instead chose to use digital platforms. He created a YouTube channel where he posted videos of him in his constituency and showed people why he deserves a shot to be elected from there. His total of 1,286,119 views on YouTube as of 14th November 2019 helped him get 3890 votes for the legislatives, which was roughly 12.13% of total voters. This shows that his way of using digital platforms certainly helped him in a big way.

Visham Ramdoo

Javesh Visham Ramdoo is one of the most popular and recognizable face in the entertainment industry in Mauritius. He has a very strong social media presence with over 783,594 total views on YouTube, nearly 44,000 followers on Facebook and more than 10,000 followers on Instagram. Visham started out by imitating famous people like “Mami Kloune” and his passion drew him to do videos. Now he is a comedian, humorist, singer, voice impersonator and animator. He generates revenue from his social media presence but also through shows and events. As of now, he has done more than 400 shows. He has shared the stage with various others celebrities like Alain Ramanisum in collaborations. In addition, he endorses brands like Jetha Tulsidas.

Jochen Kirstätter

Jochen Kirstätter, also known as “Joki” is a software craftsman, blogger, community founder and speaker. He was awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Developer Technologies as well as Visual Developer for Visual FoxPro in the past. He also founded the now largest IT community in Mauritius, Google Developer Group Mauritius. He also has a big blogging presence with over 400 articles on various IT topics on his blog “Get Blogged by JoKi.”

Nalini Aubeeluck

Nalini Aubeeluck is the director and choreographer of the Nalini Dance Group. She recently received an award in the prestigious competition, The Outstanding Young Person 2009, organised by Junior Chamber of Commerce. She anchored various well-known TV shows and presented the weather forecast at peak time on the National TV channel, Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation. She was a member of jury for the famous national dance competition Dance Fever.  She had the female lead role in the successful feature film LONBRAZ KANN that has been acclaimed in different film festival around the world. She also has her own clothing brand FAITH. This woman has a big social media presence with over 22,000 followed on Facebook.

Om Lombard

Om Lombard is an international model based in Mauritius. He created a French Bio Organic Traditional Bakery in Mauritius : La Provencal Boulangerie. At the end of 2010, he created his own FASHION BRAND: OM MY GOD!! With his first shop in Grand Bay. He has a strong social media presence with his followers amounting to 255k on Facebook and 142k on Instagram.

Anne Murielle Ravina

Anne Murielle Ravina has had a dream run in the world of fashion. She was 1st crowned Miss Uom, which opened the doors for her to be to participate in Miss Mauritius. She won the crown of Miss World Mauritius 2018 and was 2nd Miss World Africa in China. She is an ambassador for Global Rainbow Foundation and Rodrigues Tourism and her posts on social media are followed closely by her loyal fanbase.

Conclusion

Investopedia defines big data as “the large, diverse sets of information that grow at ever-increasing rates. It encompasses the volume of information about user’s autobiography and often comes from multiple sources. Big data can also be categorized as structured or unstructured.
Big data is collected from social media platforms and websites, through product purchases, electronic check-ins, locations, interests and questionnaires. Big data has its importance in the marketing area mainly as it has the potential to provide companies with profitable insights into their customers. These further enable marketers to refine marketing campaigns maximize customer engagement and conversion rates.
The realm of big data is a million dollar generating business considering how it is an important tool used in the marketing industry to affect the decision making of people. More often internet users receive an advertisement in mail or online that is quite relevant to their situation or their interest. Today there are over 4,000 data brokering companies worldwide that sell these data to leading companies across the world which explains the relevancy of advertisements to users. Acxiom is one of the largest data brokering companies in the world has over 23,000 servers that collect and analyze data for 500 million consumers worldwide.
Every search is monitored by data brokering companies and the information will be sold to companies so that they can create online ads to catch the attention of the user.
Now data brokering is a 200 million dollar industry.

Issues related to Big Data

Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying takes place over digital devices and can occur through SMS, Text, and apps, or online in social media, forums, or gaming where people can view, participate in, or share content like photos, messages, or pages that don’t get taken down, even the person has been asked to do so. It includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Some cyberbullying crosses the line into unlawful or criminal behaviour.
Cyberbullying statistics (2019) worldwide reveal alarming facts about virtual harassment, its impact, and the many different shapes and forms it can take.

Examples of Cyberbullying cases are:

• Tyler Clementi: A shy 18-year-old university freshman with a passion for playing the violin, jumped to his death from the George University Bridge.
• Ryan Halligan: He committed suicide on the 7th October 2003 where they found that he was humiliated by peers at school and online

The Mauritian Cybercrime Online Reporting System (MAUCORS) is a national online system that allows the public to report cybercrimes occurring on social media securely. It also provides advices to help recognizing and avoid common types of cybercrimes which takes place on social media websites.
Mauritius amends Information and Communication Technologies Act (ICTA) to include clause to impress heavy sentences for online messages that may be considered aggravating. Here is a screenshot showing a case of bullying which happens in Mauritius; a young man, Atish Ramnaraynan who died because of cyberbullying.

The screenshots below are some examples of cyberbullying and this is happening in Mauritius where we can see in the comment sections where people are attacking the TikTok users Arjoon and his cousin Deepti on their physical appearances which is part of online bullying.

Interconnectedness- Connecting phones to PCs
An important word that we need to know is ‘Tethering’ which means connecting two things, which is basically used for sharing the data connection of our smartphone to PC or Laptop.
This feature enables us to share information from one device to another but connecting phones to PCs/Laptops has its drawbacks. This gives the possibility to have full access to your information and beyond. How is that possible? It can be done by a legacy system of commands called AT-commands which can be used by attacker to get your phone number and downloads the contacts which are stored in the SIM card.
A lot of information are being exchanged between two devices which include phones name, the manufacturer as well, the serial number, file system, etc. So, hacker break into a smart-phone and take control of it and that’s why as mentioned above, there is a risk of data loss and driving balance to red.

Malwares & Virus
Malware is designed to cause trouble by gaining access to your device. It does not only having access to your information but sometimes it is made to steal information.
Computer can become infected in several ways. Firstly, by clicking on links to malicious sites in email messages and on messages on social media. Confidential data such as passwords are a key target of cybercriminals. Data lost and theft can occur because of malwares. The damage caused by a successful attack that erases a user’s data can be measured in terms of the value of the erased information to the user. The often neglected way to prevent data loss is by taking regular backups.

Hacking
The aim of hackers is to exploit computers illegally to steal people’s data. Hackers usually parse breach information that already exist for passwords, usernames, and emails and try to reuse those data on famous websites. Hackers use the ‘checker’ scripts, created for test batches of username: password combinations on specific websites to verify available accounts. These scripts exist for any service and are regularly updated and move within the hacker community.
Some famous hackers are:
Kevin Mitnick: He is the CEO, Team Leader, and Chief White Hat Hacker and the most popular one worldwide. Before being a trustworthy security consultant to Fortune 500 and governments around the world, he belong to the list of the FBI’s Most Wanted as he hacked into 40 big corporations. Also, he was the “most wanted computer criminal in United States history.”
Ankit Fadia: Ankit Fadia, an Indian “ethical hacker”, whose work usually include proxy websites and lifestyle, OS and networking based tips and tricks. The latter gives online certified Ethical hacking course.
Garry McKinnon: The hacker hacked 97 US military to gather data and the NASA regarding UFOs more than a decade ago.

Data breach
A data breach is the intended or unintended release of secure or private or confidential data to an environment which is not trustworthy.
Linkedln
Linkedln’s 167,370,910 accounts were hacked in June 2012, leaking emails and passwords. This illegal act was committed by Brandon Charles Glover and Vasile Mereacre, the one who hacked Uber.
Google+
In 2019, a bug in Google+ Exposed 500,000 users’ information for about 3 years. The bug had revealed users’ name, age, email address, occupation and some profile information shared secretly among users that should not have been obtainable. Google+ allowed an investigation to take place regarding this matter.
The Guardian revealed that Google decided to shut down user accessibility to Google+ after solving the bug to maintain their image and identity as well as ameliorate privacy protections.
However, Facebook is among the first names that crops up when the issue of data privacy is cropped up. The major leak of information is mainly through Third-Party apps.According to a study made by Na Wang, Heng Xu and Jens Grosslags, the privacy threats associated with the use of Third-Party apps on Facebook as affirmed by a Wall Street Journal that found out that numerous Third-Party apps on Facebook are extracting identifiable user information from the platform and sharing this bounty with advertising companies. There are more than 30 billion pieces of content (links, news, stories, posts, notes, photos) which is shared on Facebook on which users interact with over 900 million objects each month. By the end of the research, it became obvious that a large number of users’ personal information are being transmitted from Facebook to external entities.
Moreover, in Facebook’s Privacy Settings for apps or instant games, users can control the information sharing between them and other applications which were signed in using Facebook. Access to some information categories can be denied, however, there are some fields that cannot be denied access and are marked as “required” by Facebook as shown below:

It was also noted that there is insufficient reflection of the data requested. As an example, “Access my photos” was used to see whether the dialog would truly give the Third-Party app’s information practices. However, the dialog fails to demonstrate how by a simple “User photos” permission, the real information that the app could access is not limited to the shared photos as the permission enables the app to access all albums objects the user has created. Below is a chart of all the information that can be accessed by a simple “User Photos” permission.

Link between Cambridge Analytica and Campaign 2.0
Cambridge Analytica made headlines in March 2018 after a whistleblower came forward with some revelations about the company. However, Cambridge Analytica also do data brokerage for political purposes during electoral campaigns in which it sells political parties data about individuals so that these political parties can create ads or run their campaigns around the behavioural pattern of the public.
In 2018, Cambridge Analytica has used Facebook as a way to harvest the personal information of people so that it can be used for political advertising motives. It was then, that the public became aware of how unprotected the data they put online was unprotected and how, if it gets in the wrong hands, can be used against them and their will. When it was first reported, Facebook refused to comment on it but rather said it was being investigated. Due to this breach of data, people were targeted with political ads which were personalized based on their personal information so that they can be manipulated for Donald Trump to be voted in the 2016 election. The data was obtained through a personality test app that was on facebook so that the data of people who used the app would be pulled out, this includes the information about what their friends liked without their consent. ‘thisismydigitallife’ was a creation of Global Science Research that was run by Cambridge-based academic Aleksandr Kogan which was quickly used by 320,000 by facebook users. The data of around 50 million users was harvested in just two months by accessing those users’ friends networks. This data gained allowed Trump to score an upset win against Hillary Clinton. Through that campaign, Trump used the data to spread narratives on social media aiming to ignite a culture war, suppress black voter turnout and exacerbate racist views by using the help of cambridge analytica to create online personalised ads.
We can observe similarities with the Mauritian Campaign 2.0 where the is the use of social media platforms for political campaigns. The rise of social media has made it possible for political parties to use them as a way to advertise about their motives and parties. Campaign 2.0 allows the political parties to have a strong presence online trying to influence the online users’ decisions during election period.

Safety Measures for Big Data
Referring to the Cambridge Analytica issue, we found that Mark Zuckerberg has listed some changes and updates concerning the protection of data and they are as follows:

• On 19th March 2018, a forensic audit of Cambridge Analytica and other parties that were involved in the misuse of date were being pursued.
• On March 21st, Facebook promised to investigate profoundly all apps that have access to large amounts of data and information through the platform, audit any suspicion activity and would ban any developer who misused personally identifiable information and data.
• On August 22, a spokeswoman stated that third party apps were being investigated and more than 400 were suspended.
• On the 1st of May, Facebook created the ‘clear history’ tool that would allow users to force Facebook to delete all the information that it gathers about users while the browse through the web. No information would be contained about any users who use the clear history tool.

Other than the safety measures that Facebook stated: a user has other ways of protecting his/her data online. The following are the types of safety measures that can be used to protect online data.

• Installing good anti-virus software capable of scanning HTTPS traffic can protect users from phishing attacks. The antivirus will be able to scan through encrypted web communication that will analyze the content of website a user has been browsing and it will try to identify patterns that can be linked to potential malicious websites.
• A user is advised not to open suspicious email, not to download pirated software and to access only e-commerce websites that support HTTPS. This will enhance the protection of their data online.
• Do not connect to unknown networks because those can perform middleman attacks against you by intercepting the sensitive data you transfer online.

Laws in Mauritius Regarding Data Privacy
A huge amount of information is being shared through online platforms, and a big proportion of this amount is about personal data. Mauritian citizens have the right to privacy which is expressed in Sections 3 and 9 of the Constitution of Mauritius and Article 22 of the Mauritian Civil Code.
The General Data Protection Regulation was published in the Official Journal of the EU in May 2016 and came into force on the 25th of May 2018. It a law with extraterritorial reach which protects privacy rights and has obligations for example, consent requirements, data breach notification, appointment of data processors and new processes. This means that the GDPR is relevant to Mauritius as it applies to every data controller and processor regardless of geographical location. Online actions such as sending marketing emails and adverts using big data have to comply with the GDPR and this led to some changes, for example, targeting adverts for baby products at someone who searches for “morning sickness” online may be unlawful profiling based on the collection of special category personal data. Purchase marketing lists also must be subject to critical scrutiny under the GDPR.
The Data Protection Act 2017 came into force on the 15th of January 2018. The role of the DPA 2017, is shaped by the principles of GDPR, that is to aim at protecting and safeguarding privacy rights of individuals during the processing and storing process. The missions of the Data Protection Act are to “ensure lawfulness, fairness and transparency such that individuals are well informed and afforded protection for the confidentiality of their personal data in order to reduce the growing risks of data leaks in an age of ‘e-society’.

According to these laws, a data subject must provide unambiguous consent and must express by a statement or a clear affirmative action to have their data be recorded and stored by any physical or virtual platform. Opting out also must be clear and simple, such as a checkbox and further barriers like confirm in writing cannot be put in place. Moreover, prior to a collection of data, a data processor or controller must first assess the data protection impact whereby the impact of the planned processing operations on the protection of personal data is analyzed and studied. This must include an assessment of the potential risks to the rights and freedoms of individuals and envisage measures to address these risks by providing security mechanisms in case there is a breach.
Consequently, in the case of a breach, the data processor has a maximum of 72 hours to notify the breach to the Commissioner and the controller. Therefore, if the controller deems the breach to result in a high risk to the rights of the subject, the controller needs to notify the subject without delay with a clear and accurate communication exchange. This exchange is not required if appropriate and effective technical and organizational protection measures are put in place and the breach does not affect the subject.

Rights of Individuals regarding processing of their data

• Right to erasure
• Right to object to automated profiling
• Right to data portability
• Right to request data
• Right to rectification
• Right to restriction

By Bhurshita Seechurn, Josue Armance, Bhaveena D. Appadoo, Threeshika Napal and Khausar Hoota.

Less energy use equals to less pressure on energy converting companies to cater for increasing demand equals to less strain on natural resources. This simple equation is the basis of every reason why energy efficiency is a must in the 21st century.

‘Energy efficiency is a notion focusing on technology and enhanced productivity’ (Moezzi, 2000). Common practices range from simply changing halogen lighting to LED lighting to using electric vehicles for transportation. Energy efficiency is a phenomenon which cuts across various aspects, namely transportation, building design and more importantly, technology. However, with the emergence of high performance technologies comes the responsibility to be energy efficient.
The report looks at how technology, in its various forms, helps/could help in reducing the consumption of energy across the following sectors:

• Household sector
• Agricultural sector
• Transport sector

We also make a detour to analyse the concept of a paperless society and its impact on energy consumption in the long run.

Household sector
The Household sector is one where there is high consumption of energy. Indeed, with more and more people leaning towards household appliances such as dishwashers, refrigerators, air conditioner and washing machines- to mention merely a few out of too many-, the energy consumption at household level is bound to increase. In Mauritius, the energy observatory report conducted by the Energy Efficiency Management Office (EEMO) showed a growth in energy consumption of 1.6% from 2016 to 2017, and the highest source of energy was electricity, where again, the consumption increased by 2.1% in the same year. By default, this entails a greater effort on the part of multiple parties namely the Government, the manufacturers as well as the resellers of domestic appliances to bring forward the concept of energy efficiency in this area.

For household appliances manufacturers, there is a need to produce energy efficient models which cater to the growing demand by the consumers for such specificities. We look at the case of international domestic appliances maker, Candy.

Agricultural Sector
Farmcity
Founded in 2016, the farm was established on an enduring pledge to keep nutritious vegetables open to everyone, regardless of whether it involved working their horticultural unit at a misfortune. The plan of action was purposely constructed with the end goal that instructive project finances their expense of generation, so that their produce can be kept reasonable and the business suitable. Soon, they predict preventive social insurance and nourishment as the possible supplement to Farmcity’s administrations.

Every one of their harvests are developed normally, with no dangerous agrichemicals and they are developed under the TropicBird – their restrictive nursery worked for the tropics, just as in raised bed ranches loaded up with supplement rich soil that is overflowing with life. They endeavour to guarantee that these practices are working in participation with (and of advantage to) individuals and planet, frequently in direct complexity to the polluted and exploitative nature of ordinary farming. Have a look at the video to get an insight of Farmcity’s agricultural practices:

Transport Sector
Having a mean of transport has become a necessity nowadays, and the numbers of vehicles on the roads are increasing every year. In Mauritius, more than 568,879 registered vehicles were reported by the end of June 2019 (Stats Mauritius). Keeping in mind that its population is approximately 1.3 million people. According to the United States Environment Protection Agency, a typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Considering that Mauritius is a pretty small island, the amount of carbon emissions releasing into our atmosphere is immense.
Many car manufacturers across the world, such as Hyundai, Nissan, Toyota, among many others, have taken actions to make cars that produce less carbon such as hybrid and electric cars.

Hybrid Cars
A hybrid car has a regular engine, an electric motor and a battery and it works by combining a petrol with an electric motor. It is more ecological than other typical cars because it consumes less energy, thus emitting less C02 in the air. According to National Land Transport Authority, there are 7745 Honda hybrid cars and 4333 Toyota hybrid, which was registered from 2009 till September 2019 in Mauritius. BMW was in third place with 260 registered cars.

Electric Cars
Electric cars run at least partly on electricity and it uses electric motor powered by electricity from batteries or a fuel cell (device that converts chemical potential energy into electrical energy). It works when it is plugged into a charge point. Electricity is stored in rechargeable batteries that power electric motor. Those cars are usually more environment friendly than conventional cars in terms of greenhouse gas emissions as they have no exhaust emissions (Lester Lave, Chris Hendrickson and Francis Clay McMichael, 1995). However, the production and distribution of the energy used to charge them determined how clean they are to a country.

In Mauritius, the Central Electricity Board produces 40% of the country’s total power requirement from four thermal power stations and eight hydroelectric plants. The rest is bought by independent power producers, primarily from sugarcane industry which used bagasse and imported coal to generate electricity (export.gov). As the way Mauritius produces electricity is not ecologically appropriate, thus, having an electric car does not seem to be an environment friendly option.

Solar cars
With the advance of technology, solar cars are becoming slowly a reality as they are prototypes for now. They are a hybrid with electric cars with photovoltaic cells to convert energy from sunlight into electricity. With the increase interest in renewable and sustainable energy systems, sustainable transport is becoming more popular than ever. However, it is still inaccessible to the mass due to its expensiveness.

The case of Metro Express
While investigating about how technology is being used for a more sustainable environment, The Metro Express from the Transport sector field caught our attention. The introduction of Metro Express- Light Rail Transit System will contribute into preserving our environment and traffic congestion. Light rail or light rail transit (LRT) is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and metro systems, but higher capacity and higher speed than traditional street-running tram systems. Modern light rail technology is flexible and adaptable, and uses electrical energy to function instead of fuel. (Railsystem.net, 2019)

Paperless society
The climate benefits of reducing paper consumption are worthy of attention. For example, if the U.S cuts its office paper use by a mere 10%, greenhouse gas emissions would plummet by 1.45 million metric tons. This is equivalent to removing 280000 cars off the road for a year.

It’s interesting to see how new technology is constantly making its way into the Mauritian educational system in an attempt to improve the learning experience, all while promoting a sustainable future. Universities, colleges and schools are using computers and mobile devices in an attempt to create a paperless classroom; they implement different approaches when it comes to putting the paperless classroom in place.

The Sankoré project, an initiative implemented in primary schools targeting students from Grade 4 to Grade 6, brings to life the idea of a digital classroom with the help of an interactive projector, a laptop and an infrared pen. Universities make use of free online resources such as Moodle and Google Classroom to promote a more digitalised, sustainable and environment-friendly education.
Computerising and digitising has definitely had a positive impact on the Mauritian education system. But, this is only a small step towards a paperless society. Even banks are gradually implementing online banking platforms such as Juice by the Mauritis Commercial Bank which has greatly facilitated the idea of internet banking on our island.

However, our health sector is still deeply engaged in archaic paper-based processes. Digitising and computerising everything would enable the Mauritian hospitals not only to be more productive, but to reduce significantly the over-consumption of paper.

La déforestation est un des facteurs provoquant le changement climatique à Maurice. Selon un article de « Ecology and Society », la déforestation a provoqué d’importantes érosions dans l’ile. Durant les années 1850 la déforestation était courante à cause de la colonisation. Cela a causé la perte de forêts tropicales dans l’ile.

Malheureusement, cette pratique néfaste pour l’écosystème perdure encore à ce jour. Maurice fait maintenant face à la perte massive de forêts de mangroves. Cette perte qui contribue à l’augmentation du niveau de la mer. Des études démontrent que cela pourrait éventuellement être périlleux pour les zones côtières dans un premier abord et finir par inonder l’ile.

Fabiola Monty spécialiste de l’environnement chez «DIS-MOI» nous donne plus de détails dans cette entrevue.

Selon l’International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), il y aurait un besoin urgent d’investir dans des solutions environnementales afin de réduire les risques de désastres naturels dans le futur. En 2016, la déforestation a battu son record mondial avec la perte de 30 millions d’hectares de forêts, qui représente le double du rythme des années précédentes. Cette tendance contribue hélas à perte de la bio-diversité dans le monde.

La spécialiste de l’environnement explique que l’abattage des chauves-souris par exemple, est néfaste pour la biodiversité.

D’après la spécialiste, même s’il existe des tentatives de reboisement, les forêts plantées ne peuvent compenser la perte des forêts naturels. Selon elle, la restauration des forêts devrait être une priorité afin de lutter contre ce problème environnemental.

À noter que selon un article publié par la Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation, plus de 300 plantes endémiques mauriciennes en voie de disparition, viennent d’être rapatriées à Maurice après qu’elles aient été envoyées au Conservatoire Botanique National de Brest, en France, il y a 40 ans pour les sauver de l’extinction.

2019 a connu de nombreux accidents de routes graves coutant la vie à de nombreuse personne. Maurice compte plus d’une cinquantaine d’accidents de route à ce jour depuis le début de l’année. La situation n’a pas évolué depuis l’an dernier. Les chiffres démontrent que l’année 2018 a été aussi bien meurtrière sur nos routes. On note 141 morts pour l’année 2018. Toutefois, rien que pour les sept premiers mois de l’année dernière, on dénombrait 99 morts, contre 69 morts en 2017. Dans un interview de l’inspecteur Matthur accordé à Télé Plus, ce dernier met en cause les sorties arrosées et l’imprudence des automobilistes.

Cependant des mésures ont été prises récemment afin de réduire cette tendance meurtrière. En décembre 2018, une programme de formation a été mis en place afin de sensibiliser les plus jeunes. Le Ministère du Transport a tenté de former les enseignants des établissements primaires dans un premier abord, les établissements secondaires restent un projet d’avenir. Par ailleurs, en 2018, il y a aussi eu un amendement de La Road Traffic Act incluant ainsi 204 délits. Le montant des amendes a été revu pour des délits tels que l’excès de vitesse. Ceux qui prennent le volant sans permis ou ceux qui prennent la route après que leur permis ait été suspendu devront payer une amende de Rs 50 000 à Rs 100 000.

Plusieurs campagnes de sensibilisation ont été mises en place afin de lutter contre ce problème de société. En janvier de l’année dernière, une campagne sous le thème «Ensam Pa Les Koltar Touy Nou Fami» a été initié par le conseil des ministres dans le cadre de réduire le nombre d’accidents de la route.

Toutefois, aucune de ces mesures de préventions mises en place ne pourra réduire le nombre d’accidents sans qu’elles soient respectées et appliquées par les usagers de la route. Chacun devrait en faire un devoir de respecter et d’appliquer ces mesures de prévoyance. De simples gestes responsables tels que: ne pas prendre d’alcool au volant, ne pas utiliser son téléphone portable au volant ou même respecter la limite de vitesse imposée peut éviter de graves accidents.