ABSTRACT
The development of media and especially the Internet has changed relations between visibility and power and forced public relations practitioners to rethink the old paradigm of crisis management. This chapter explores Herman Cain's social media strategies before and during the sexual harassment scandal, specifically focusing on the social media platform Twitter. The significance of political scandals' damage to the viability of politicians has increased in the post-Watergate age, largely due to the development of communication media, including social media. The chapter defines sentiment as a computationally derived measure of how positive or negative the emotional content of a tweet is. The demographic makeup of Twitter might explain why Cain was unable to reach the Twitter audience effectively. Apparently, Herman Cain increased the value of information about his past by failing to provide a clear response to Politico, a news organization that requested a comment about his alleged inappropriate behavior.
