The Social Media in Practice Excellence Awards 2017: An Anthology of Case Histories

Book excerpt: Giving visibility to interesting or leading edge applications of social media is the objective of the Social Media in Practice Excellence Awards Competition. We have been looking for effective social media applications in business or in the public sector. The call for case histories was announced in late 2015 and 20 submissions were received describing on an outline basis a social media initiative. 15 contributors were invited to forward a full case history. A panel of judges chose the case history finalists who are invited to present their work at the 4th European Conference on Social Media, in Vilnius, Lithuania in July 2017. The emphasis of the successful case histories is on innovative, creative and effective social media applications and the finalists published in this book are demonstrating this. Submissions to the competition this year are widespread with contributions from Austria, China, India, the USA and the UK. The initiatives are also diverse, and include a customer engagement application in China, The FOSSIL Project from the United States that uses social paleontology to bring together paleontologists from across the spectrum of expertise, the EDINA Digital Footprint Consultancy & Training Service from the UK, the Traditions Challenge which encourages student participation in school activities from the USA, a system using Digital Natives’ Everyday Social Media Behaviour to Anticipate Their Acceptance of Technology Innovations In Business from Austria and a case history looking at Social Big Data Processing.