 
Jay Baker believes in the impact of social media.A keen propaganda critic and analyst, he is aware that – like many things – it can be used for good, or bad. Since the popularization of public relations from Edward Bernays’ work promoting cigarettes as “torches of freedom,” and his subsequent involvement with Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Commission that twisted truths to gain support for U.S. involvement in the First World War, propaganda has been utilized more and more over the last century. People have been influenced in both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, though there are many more examples closer to home, where politicians have retained power through their links to mainstream media controlled by fewer and fewer corporate interests. Noam Chomsky once stated that, “propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” But there are more inspiring examples as well. In the U.S., it was George Holliday’s camcorder that captured LAPD officers using excessive force on Rodney King, an act that spawned the Copwatch group across the region where citizens started to keep a watchful eye on apprehensions. Had it not been for another camcorder filming them, the agent provocateurs on the Security & Prosperity Partnership demonstrations in Quebec, Canada, would never have been exposed, unmistakably wearing police-issue boots and thus caught trying to provoke violence to discredit peaceful protesters. On the G20 economic summit in London here in the UK, it was somewhat ironic that a New York investment fund manager had given The Guardian newspaper his mobile phone footage of Metropolitan police assaulting Ian Tomlinson, who died of a heart attack moments later. In the Middle East, a series of people’s uprisings have taken place through social media mobilization, coordinating their peaceful protests through sites such as Twitter, and – for example, in Egypt – filming footage contradicting the message of the oppressive regime’s state television. And in Burma, the heroic VJs (video journalists), despite facing imprisonment, torture, or even death, have provided the only glimpses of the truth of the military junta’s oppression there in the face of an international media ban, smuggling their media to the global community via the internet. Social media remains an effective, efficient method to spread a message – be it about your local community, an incident you’ve captured, or a venture you’ve embarked upon. It is Jay Baker’s mission to enhance all of these and more, by empowering people to use social media effectively to get their message out there. |
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