Digital Disaster for Politicans in the New Media Age

COMMENTARY | Despite his unfortunate last name, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) has achieved much. But an incident on Twitter has threatened the congressman's name while drawing negative attention to his corresponding body part.

A lewd photo of an unidentified male's crotch was sent from the married congressman's verified Twitter account to a 21-year-old female student in Seattle. The congressman has maintained, though with increasing frustration, according to ABC News, that he did not send the photo. Weiner claims his account was hacked.

Politicians utilizing social networks today are now prey to a whole new dimension of transparency; with the dawn of the digital era, culpability saves the receipt.

Christopher Lee, a married father, served the 26^th District of New York as a Republican until he responded to a personal advertisement on Craigslist with a topless photo of himself. Though he used his personal Gmail account for his extra-marital correspondence, his online trolling adventure was quickly revealed to the public.

Lee resigned from the U.S. House within hours of Gawker breaking the story. After the fact, a spokesman for the former congressman explained that Lee had been -- wait for it -- hacked. But could even Julian Assange take and send a shirtless photo of Lee without his knowledge?

While these male politicians blame the solicitous advances of their personal digital real estate on someone else, Krystal Ball (really), took a different approach to dealing with the metaphorical skeletons in the depths of her own social network's closet.

During her campaign to defeat Republican incumbent for Virginia's 1^st congressional district last November, old Facebook photos of Ball at a party were circulated by opposition. Yes, the photos involved a dildo and Santa hat, but, no, they were not an aberration of Facebook behavior: Look at the revelry posted on nearly any twenty-something's page.

Rather than deny or deflect blame, the 28-year-old took the opportunity to underscore that point while campaigning against sexism politics.

"But I realized that photos like the ones of me, and ones much racier, would end up coming into the public sphere when women of my generation run for office. And I knew that there could be no other answer to the question than this: Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office," Ball wrote in a blog according to Salon. Regardless, she was defeated.

And then there is Sarah Palin, the godmother of politics online in 140 characters or less. As the pioneer of a new media political ethos and dialect (literally, please recall her coinage of the term refudiate), her unabashed submersion into online social networks embraces new media scandal as much as her career was built upon it.

When the group Anonymous hacked Palin's personal email account, according to Time a "good anonymous" reset the password and alerted Palin before much damage was done. Simultaneously, federal officials infiltrated a different personal email account to investigate if Palin had a personal role in firing Walt Monegan, Alaska's public safety commissioner.

Palin then deleted both accounts, an act some called destruction of evidence. But in fact, then the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Palin actually garnered sympathy (and media attention) for the incidents.

Though she made up a word on Twitter, possibly conducted official state business on her personal email account, and used online imagery that some pundits contributed to the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), Palin's followers are growing: She's not logging off anytime soon.

Weiner has a fighting chance with the hacker excuse because the indicting digital image didn't include his face, unlike the photo sent from Lee's email account. And Weiner, unlike Ball, doesn't have to deal with self-submitted autobiographical digital images in non-anonymous cyberspace -- the main component of participation on Facebook (it is a network based on looking, after all).

But Weiner, unlike Palin, does not have the new media Midas touch. Plus, the nature of Weiner's social network nightmare is sexual. It also seems like Weiner (or the alleged hacker(s)) used Twitter for tawdry purposes more than once: Gawker recently reported that Weiner has been in contact with a porn star via Twitter.

From a web-based scandal, Weiner could expect some laughs and new followers -- fans and trolls alike. But from a web-based sex-scandal that's getting slippery, well, Weiner better find that hacker. Or else he'll be left with that unfortunate last name and the mere recollection of his achievements when he used to be a congressman.