Reputation management has transformed the political landscape. Any politician Fifteen years ago had a tough time living with any scandal that surfaced to the public; today, that is not the case. Residents of the United States tend to keep track of the most popular candidates for any election; whether it’s George W. Bush or Barrack Obama. The best way to keep track or to gain info on the candidates are through search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Search engines make it simple to find previous political debates or advertisements; as well as any scandals the candidates have gone through. Just like the scandal Hillary Clinton has faced when she was secretary of state, there was a term coined after the scandal which was “Crooked Hillary.” This term emerged from social media and spread throughout the online community like wildfire. In search engines, if you type a word or phrase into any search engine, there are usually some suggestions and when people typed “crooked,” there was no suggestion of Hillary anywhere. It seems that Google has modified their algorithm to hide all the negative results pertaining to Hillary Clinton.
The email scandal that took place in the past have resurfaced but not to the full extent. At the time, only some of the emails have been released to the press and public which most people were aware. However, a majority didn’t know that most of those emails were sent through AOL and Gmail servers. A spokesman for Google and Gmail refused to comment on this issue. Additionally to affecting the Google suggestions, it seems as though some Google searches about Hillary Clinton have not gained any results. All the results associated with Hillary Clinton were completely positive which favoured her. If one were to search “Hillary Clinton crime,” it would yield no real material concerning with the scandal. Reputation management has become a hidden service for politicians such as Hillary but she isn’t the only one.
Anyone can notice that Google search results for Hillary have been adjusted; however, Donald Trump is also in the same boat as Hillary. After all the racist comments and the backing of the violent supporters, none of the negative results were found for Trump. Questions have risen, asking if Google can be paid off to change the results or are they terrible at their job? Most if not all google users would agree that Google is an exceptional company that puts out amazing products and services so the likelihood of them performing poorly is rather low. The evidence is clear that search engines have been tampered in order to help political candidates and the residents of the nation will have a hard time finding any articles or news relating to any negative news. The best way for people to find dirt on political candidates is by using many different types of search engines with various other keywords. Also, many people post videos or articles on social media; especially the pages where they post news about politics and the economy. It may not have the validity as the New York Times but it is better than nothing for locating dirt on public figures.