By Onwuasoanya FCC Jones
As a media worker, especially, as one practicing in any or all these areas; reputation management, propaganda, perception setting or manipulation, information war and narrative setting, you have to understand that your job entails a lot; the bad, the beautiful, the ugly and the deadly. However, your most important job is to keep your principal or the brand you are marketing, in the consciousness of the people, by every means, creative.
Your job becomes much more demanding if you are working in politics or in the entertainment industry, hence, you need to have your thinking cap, always on. In the entertainment and political fields, the competition for attention is high and keeping up can be arduous, so you will need to be ahead of the curve, in order to keep your brand, principal or your political party in the news.
For a politician who is out of office, but still retains the ambition of returning to power, his handlers will need to be creative with ideas in order to keep him in the consciousness of the people. In the entertainment industry, we could devise stunts to attract attention to our brand or projects, including, setting up street brawls or even staging a scandal, including, a brush with the law or even death rumours.
No publicity is really a bad one, but it is always best to be in charge of whatever narrative that goes out on behalf of your brand.
One of the most creative politicians in the world, when it comes to using the media to achieve his set goals is Donald Trump of America. Having played in the entertainment industry, Trump understands perception management and puts it to good use for the advancement of his political goals.
He is also a good case study on the power of human psychology in information management and designs. You can credit the creative deployment of the media for most of the successes he has recorded in politics, especially, his unprecedented comeback in the last election.
Death rumours, attempted assassinations, accidents, narrow survivals, etc, are some of the most effective ways to keep a politician and a celebrity alive in the consciousness of people. You can bet me, that many of the fake rumours of death you read about some politicians and top celebrities were planted by their media teams, and when it is not planted by them, the sensible ones could help to escalate it, in order to extract maximum publicity capital from it.
So, when next you hear or read fake news, especially, the one targeting a politician or a celebrity, wait to read the rebuttal from their media departments. If you are experienced, you might be able to know the origin of the fake news.
