Anthony Weiner

By Stephanie Taylor

For our crisis management paper, we decided to focus on the former Congressman Anthony Weiner. Weiner isn’t new to scandal, in fact, he has been caught doing the same thing twice. Weiner committed the scandal that teachers and family members warn young teenagers about, sexting. However, for a “supposedly” happy married man, it caused a huge uproar in D.C.

The first scandal occurred when Weiner used Twitter to send a link to a sexually suggestive picture to a 21-year-old woman from Seattle. Instead of coming clean on the event, Weiner denied the allegations for several days. He eventually admitted to sending the link and other sexually explicit photos and messages to women before and during his marriage. After this scandal, Weiner announced his intent to resign on June 23, 2011.

The second scandal occured July 23, 2013, just after Weiner returned to politics in April. More photos and sexting by Weiner were released by a tabloid website. Weiner acknowledged his mistake , and admitted sexting at least three women during this period. He was called on by the New York Times and others to leave the mayoral race, but he remained and took fifth place.

After analyzing Anthony Weiner’s social media I have found that he does not use it in an effective way to combat the negative publicity that he has received from his scandals.

On Facebook he has 55,669 followers, which for a politician is increasingly low. Rick Perry, the mayor of Texas has 329,995 likes. Although I would have to do more research to figure out the average amount of “likes” for a congressman, it seems pretty low. Weiner posts content for political agendas that he supports , but often with a sarcastic undertone, and often pointing out the mistakes of the current government or republicans.

 

 

Anthony Weiner’s Twitter is also lacking followers compared to other politicians. Again I will need to research the average amount of followers congressmen have on their social media sites for this one. Weiner’s Twitter account is full of articles which he supports and makes fun of. Weiner also tweets about political agendas he does not support. Weiner is mainly known for twitter attacking people and policies through the use of hashtags.

It will be interesting to write an analysis on this congressman’s journey through the scandal and see what he should have done differently.