The BBC has published a piece of analysis by Prof. Alfred Hermida on the tangled web of the Spitzer scandal, the prostitute and social media.
The article, entitled “The web, the politician and the prostitute,” discusses how young adults such Ashley Alexandra Dupre make it easy for journalists and bloggers to find out intimate details on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
The growth of these social networking sites has made it much easier to get hold of deeply personal material.
Since it is digital, it is easy to copy and replicate across the web. And it all gets indexed and cached by Google, making it easy to find.
Prof. Hermida argues that the way the media feeds on the personal information on social media sites raises questions about what can be considered public or private in an Internet age.
