By now, if you have been reading the news lately, the story about Representative Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-New York) and his lewd picture on Twitter would catch your attention. In brief, on the evening of May 27, a lewd photo of a man’s bulging underwear was sent to a 21-year-old female college student in Seattle from Weiner’s Twitter account.

Although it was deleted extremely quickly, lots of Twitter users and other means of news and media outlets could see it. Weiner’s spokesman immediately claimed that his Twitter account had been hacked and he was just a victim of a photo prank; they needed time to conduct an internal investigation to find out what had occurred to Weiner’s account.

However, after 10 days of denialsa choked-up Weiner confessed that he tweeted this photo of himself.  He further admitted that over the past three years to having“inappropriate” and sometimes explicit exchanges with six women he met online through the social network sites like Twitter or Facebook, before and after his marriage.

Even though with a hugely regrettably attitude,Weiner wiped his eyes during the conference, it may be too difficult to forgive his lies when he got caught and his attempt to cover up by blaming someone else for his misconduct.  And despite all of this, he said he won’t resign but one week after his confession many House Democrats are calling for his resignation and even President Obama,commented on the scandal.

So now, the question is what is happening with the other Congress members since the Weiner’s Internet Affair? It is shown that Republicans are avoiding Twitter altogether or at least they are much more cautious with any action on social networking.

TweetCongress, a site aggregating tweets from members of Congress, looked at the Twitter activities of Democrats and Republicans from May 9 to June 8, with weekends excluded, and found out that tweets from members of both parties are down roughly 30% since Weiner’s lewd photo. Perhaps the Congress people did learn the lesson not to have inappropriate romantic relationship on Twitter and that is the reduction we are seeing, not just avoiding Twitter altogether. Nope, it is just a joke.

In the end, we all know that the “Weinergate” drama is going to die-off like many scandals due to gaffes on political social media account; nevertheless, the bottom line is the valuable social media lessons politicians should learn fromRep. Weiner’s Twitter failure.

The first islearning how to use social media. Before posting, tweeting and using any apps, you have to be sure to use the platform correctly; otherwise it’s easy to make a mistake. Don’t be wrong between sending a private message and sharing it in public. Remember that it’s a social network- you send something through a private message, that doesn’t mean the person receiving the information will not publicize the content with one simple click.

Secondly, deliberate on the message you want to share. If you’re sharing something through social media, you should think twice in order to make sure whether or not it’s appropriate.

Last but not least, you must to be honest. Anyone can make a mistake, even famous politicians.Lying just makes everything more mess-up and difficult to resolve. You know that the hardest thing in the world is to regain people’s trust therefore telling the truth should be prioritized.

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About the author

My Nguyen
I was a little girl alone in my little world. I asked God who I’m supposed to be. The stars smiled down on me, God answered in silent reverie. I said a prayer and fell asleep. I had a dream that I could fly from the highest tree.

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1 Comment for After Weinergate Scandal, Did Congress Members Learn Anything?

Claudia Sondergaard

Very interesting article – brings up the question; should politicians not express their true self? Having the entire political system gagging itself and tip-toeing around the internet seems to indicate that they've got things to hide…..

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