In the afternoon, eight round table discussions were held simultaneously to allow Finalists of each category to interact with other finalists in the same category in the presence of a social media Expert/Jury member. These eight roundtables focused on future of Citizen Media & Journalism; Communication, Advocacy & Development Activism; Community Mobilisation; Crowdsourcing, Crowd Economy & Crowdfunding; Online Safety; Public Relations; Social Commerce & Enterprise; and Women Empowerment using social media.
Some of the key points discussed in these sessions were:
- Citizen journalism via social media is helping the society in creating awareness in areas and on topics that often go unnoticed by mainstream media houses.
- Since everyone has easy access to mobile phones today, people should learn to verify information before its consumption.
- Social media has become the latest tool of advocacy and activism, with thousands of campaign taking up the virtual space to make a difference.
- Lack of access to social media platforms for rural youth is an important challenge in information dissemination that must be addressed.
- Non-profit organisations that earlier struggled to get funding now have access to crowdfunding, courtesy social media and the Internet.
- Users need to be sensitised about online safety so that they can keep themselves secure in this age of increasing digital footprints.
- There is a wide information gap in India. With India moving fast towards Digital India, the marginalised communities are getting marginalised even further due to lack of access to information available online.
- There is a need to train rural youth in Internet-based entrepreneurship.
- Social media is proving to be a vital tool for sales, marketing and promotion for small, medium and big enterprises of all kinds.
- Patriarchy in the offline world has moved to the online world too. Women are often judged, trolled and attacked on social media — much more than their male counterparts are — for what they share.
These discussions allowed Finalists to get a wider view of what all innovations are happening in the world of social media by their peers in the same area of interest as theirs.
