The shortlisting process for the Ghana Blogging & Social Media Awards 2016 took place from Feb. 15 – March 5, 2016 and was undertaken by the Internal Awards Committee comprised of Jemila Abdulai, Edward Amartey-Tagoe and Fred Frimpong, all of whom were exempt from submitting nominations and/or being nominated.

Almost 400 nominations were received covering 18 categories and the awards committee reviewed and rated all submissions. With the exemption of the Best Blog and Best New Blog categories which have 9 finalists each due to the sheer volume of eligible nominees, all other categories have a maximum of 7 finalists. Finalists under each category scored the highest in their given categories.

Where necessary, blogs, bloggers or netizens were re-categorized at the discretion of the committee. The Best Google+ Page category was dropped due to lack of competitiveness. In all instances, a premium was placed on original content. The list of final nominees is available HERE.

 

GENERAL SHORTLIST CRITERIA & GUIDELINES

In order to be considered as a finalist under any category, a long-list nominee must have met the following general criteria in order to be shortlisted:

1. Eligible and consistent content within the review period of Jan. 1 – Dec. 31, 2017
2. Meet the ‘individual’ or ‘entity’ requirement for the category in question
3. Must be run or partly run by a Ghanaian and/or focused on and relevant to Ghana
4. Be ethical in nature and not have plagiarized content

 

Blogging Categories:

In addition to the general criteria, long-list nominees under the blogging categories must have met the following criteria in order to be shortlisted:

• Produced at least 18 posts within the review period, with the exception of those under the “Best New Blog” and “Best Post of 2016” categories

• At least 50% of the content under review is original (ie. not simply a republication of articles or content from other platforms)

 

Social Media Categories

In addition to the general criteria, long-list nominees under the social media categories must have met the following criteria in order to be shortlisted:

• Verifiable online content that is largely original (ie. not simply shares, retweets, regrams, etc.

• Generated a lot of interest, followership and engagement

 

CATEGORY-SPECIFIC SHORTLIST CRITERIA & GUIDELINES

In addition to the general criteria, the following category-specific guidelines were taken into consideration:

 

Best Blog

• Quality, organisation and presentation of content
• Audience following and engagement (via blog comments, shares and social media following)

 

Best Blogger

• Quality, organisation and presentation of content
• Value addition within the blogging community (either through Blogging Ghana initiatives, other groups or on own accord. Essentially, does this person give back or contribute to developing/nurturing others?)
• Followership and engagement (via blog comments, shares and social media following)
• Creativity in producing and sharing relevant content (does this person push the envelope when it comes to blogging mechanisms, tools, etc?)

 

Best New Blog

• Must be less than one year as of Jan. 2017
• Period of review is Jan. 01 – Dec. 31, 2017.
• Have at least one post per month within the review period
• Show great promise in terms of content produced.

 

Best “Emerging Niche” Blog

• Must be less than two years as of Jan. 2017
• Be an authority and/or have a clear focus on one of three niche areas – fashion/style, entertainment OR science & technology – producing interesting content of relevance to Ghana
• Have at least one post per month within the review period
• Audience following and engagement (via blog comments, shares and social media following)

 

Best Post of 2018

• Relevant to Ghana
• Ethical and not plagiarised
• Significant engagement by way of comments, likes, retweets, shares, etc
• Have a clear author (not anonymous)

 

NB: ‘Ethical’ means that the blog/blogger/netizen gives due credit, does not plagiarise and adheres to generally accepted principles of ethical journalism, specifically truth and accuracy, independence, and accountability.

 

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All queries about the awards should be sent to the Awards Committee at awards(AT)bloggingghana(dot)org or as a message via the BloggingGhana Facebook page.