Summit Award Announced

A new award, The Summit Award, will be presented at this year’s Yankee Chapter PRSA annual meeting in June. The award is the second for the chapter, which also presents the Patrick Jackson Award annually, to recognize non public relations practitioners who successfully use public relations principles to benefit his or her organization and society.

The Summit Award will recognize excellence in a specific area of focus, which will vary year-to-year, based on trends, behaviors, and new technologies in the public relations field.

This year’s award will recognizes excellence in the use of social media as the primary tool utilized in a public relations campaign. The award winner (individual, team, or business) will be recognized for effective use of one or more “new media” or “social media” tools to achieve a specific objective.

Social media public relations initiatives are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information (sprythink.com/glossary.html). Social media are works of user-created video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, microblog, wiki or video hosting site. Further, they include social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter; social bookmarking sites like Del.iciou.us; social news sited like Digg or Reddit; and other sites that are centered on user interaction