Social Media empowers you in a way it gives you a platform to communicate your perception, views, thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions in a simple or artistic way. Not only confined to this, it is also an important approach to business that is rapidly expanding. It acts as a bridge between the business and the consumer. Social Media is a communication channel easily accessible to nearly everyone with Internet access.

Social Media has become the most promising tool for development and empowerment in the recent years, world over to promote vision, purpose, and activities; spread news; build support; attract volunteers and donors; and engage with interested segments of the population.

With the 5th edition of Social Media for Empowerment Awards, DEF greets the spirit of social media and the potential it possesses. This initiative not only focuses on and honors the best social media initiatives for the empowerment of the deprived and marginalised sections but also brings Social Media experts and government agents from 8 South Asian countries on one platform to share their best practices and success stories with participants to inspire them.

On the other hand, we’ve seen social media being used as a popular tool to disseminate hate speech, especially hate speech based on religion. It is also used by nefarious elements for propaganda-based hate messaging, in a manner whereby it often becomes viral, making it difficult to identify the source and hold the user responsible. This trend is not unique to India. It is visible in various other countries as well. South Asian countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, too, have seen freedom of expression being curbed by not just the state but also by extremist groups who claim to be protecting their country, their religion or their communities.

These incidents confirm that social media plays a critical role in creating and spreading hate speech, and has been used numerous times for promoting communal and religious hate speech with a clear agenda of provoking violence.

Social Media aficionados, who are enthusiastic to gain insight from social media experts and willing to share their own ideas and practices, are invited to attend the Awards. The SM4E Awards provides all the participants and attendees an opportunity to connect and become a part of social media experts’ network to gain a greater understanding of social and digital media uses as well as share their own best practices and experiences.

USP

  1. It works out concrete ways to increase understanding, cooperation and peace among the region;
  2. It gives social media practitioners a platform to scale up their dreams;
  3. It benefits the communities with the fruit of ICT revolution through various workshops and action-oriented sessions, which prove helpful for them to gain full social inclusion;
  4. It promotes healthy and constructive communication among participating countries.

Objectives

To synergise efforts and dialogues on social media and how it can become an efficient tool for real work and inspire others to utilize it in bringing positive
change;

• To make a vast pool of talent of Social Media evangelists to share and feed knowledge so that decision making can be improved;

• To recognize, honor and encourage best social media practices through Social Media for Development & Change Awards;

• To organize workshops on different project locations to impart knowledge on social media tools in order to empower communities and continue the spirit of subject Live;

• To Create a regional network of Social Media Experts to facilitate the use of Social Media among participating countries and create regional cooperation, collaboration and network;

• To demonstrate the best social media initiatives, practices and success stories from 8 South Asian Countries during main event;

• To provide attendees with a wider forum for strategic alliances, partnership building and structured network opportunities;

• To build a tribe of followers through social media that grows organically and contributes in overall development of the region;

• To create effective community network that shares authentic information on social changes and developmental activities through social media;

• To provide a platform to the existing as well as upcoming social media initiatives for scaling up.