If you were anywhere near the Internet this past weekend, you read or heard about the Jennifer Lawrence nude photo scandal. Actually, the private photo collections of numerous models, actresses and celebrities, including not just Jennifer Lawrence but also Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and others were hacked, put up online, sent around virally and viewed millilons of times. Putting aside the obvious criminal and moral violations of the photo leak, one has to marvel at the speed and magnitude at which people were able to take in the content. So the question becomes, how can we send around our political messages with this kind of speed and impact?
By now, most of us are familiar with Anthony Weiner‘s personal behavioral lapses in his Twitter sex scandal. However, Weiner’s public messaging failures in this case were also epic. Weiner adopted a strange strategy of denying part of the story, i.e., that he had sent photos of his underwear-clad crotch to a woman via Twitter, but then saying that he could not state “with certitude” whether the picture in question was of him. This vague answer struck many reporters as suspicious, and they continued their media feeding frenzy that, within a few days, led to Weiner’s press conference where he did an about-face and admitted that the picture in question was of him, that he sent the photo, and that he had sent similar photos and/or had similar online exchanges with approximately six other women. Now Weiner’s political career hangs by a thread.
So what could, and should, Weiner have done differently, messaging-wise, once the initial stories about him were publicized?
