Online,a conflict in Uganda soars to No. 1 topic

Since being posted Monday KONY 2012 has attracted more than 50 m views on YouTube,Vimeo

Jason Russell said he never knew he was driving into a war zone. At 24,he had just graduated from the University of Southern California after studying film,he said,and was out looking for a story to tell.

Suddenly,he said,gunmen shot at the truck in front of him,and that is how he discovered the horrors wrought by Joseph Kony and his Lords Resistance Army. Russell would dedicate the next nine years of his life,often in obscurity,to making them a household name.

This week,in a testament to the explosive power of social media,he managed to do so in a matter of days,baffling diplomats,academics and Ugandans who have worked assiduously on the issue for decades.

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Since being posted on Monday,their video,KONY 2012, has attracted more than 50 million views on YouTube and Vimeo,generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations on the first day alone and rocketing across Twitter and Facebook at a pace rarely seen for any video,let alone a half-hour film about a distant conflict in central Africa.

Though Russell is at a loss to fully explain it,he has clearly tapped into a vein of youthful idealism that the authorities the world over have been struggling and failing to comprehend and keep up with. YouTube said the popularity was driven by viewers in the US and those younger than 25. Many parents,including at least one in the State Department,discovered the video only after their children showed it to them. Mark had it brought to his attention by his 13-year-old, Victoria Nuland,a State Department spokeswoman,said on Thursday,referring to her colleague,Mark C. Toner.

The surge of awareness is even more remarkable considering President Obama said in October he had authorised deployment of 100 American military advisers to help African nations working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield.

Yet many viewers had never heard of Kony or his murderous band of fighters until seeing the video by Russells group,Invisible Children,pop up in their Facebook feeds.

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On Tuesday,views on YouTube,already climbing steadily,exploded at a vertiginous rate after celebrities began posting messages,including Oprah Winfrey,with her nearly 10 million Twitter followers. Soon,other celebrities,like Rihanna and Ryan Seacrest began posting about it,too. Posting to Twitter Wednesday,Seacrest wrote,Was going to sleep last night and saw ur tweets about #StopKony … watched in bed,was blown away.