Geneva Engage Awards
The Geneva Engage initiative, launched by the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP, under DiploFoundation) with the support of the Republic and Canton of Geneva in 2016, assesses the interplay between International Geneva and stakeholders all over the world. The initiative includes research on how International Geneva actors communicate and create linkages with communities worldwide that are affected by the policy discussions in Geneva that span across various domains, such as development, human rights, health, environment, digital topics, etc.
In this context, the annual Geneva Engage Awards acknowledge the efforts of International Geneva actors in digital outreach. The awards evaluate Geneva-based organisations’ social media engagement, web relevance and accessibility, and innovative events. We then give out awards in three main categories according to stakeholder groups: international organisations, non-governmental organisations, and permanent representations.
To learn more about DiploFoundation and its other initiatives, please visit Diplomacy.edu.
A moment of change
In addition to the main categories, we have special awards that recognise innovative ways actors can create meaningful engagement while adapting to the ever-changing digital ecosystem.
In 2020, ahead of the COVID-induced remote working, we foresaw the value of online conferencing and introduced the new Online Participation Award (now Effective and Innovative Events Award). In 2023, we recognised the importance of curating a more inclusive experience for all and introduced the Accessibility Award.
This year, we aim to take a step back and reflect on what it means to create meaningful engagement. In this light, this year’s event involves new activities to encourage brainstorming discussions and innovations.
We all need accessibility. To Everything. Really.
“Over 1 billion people worldwide live with disabilities. This makes them/us the world’s largest minority group,” wrote Ginger Paque, Diplo’s Senior Policy Editor.
Our daily lives are increasingly intertwined with the digital world; we shop, learn, search for information, access public services, and carry out many other daily tasks online. Web accessibility naturally becomes a critical issue for us to tackle. What are some obstacles that currently bar people from engaging in meaningful activities online? How do we ensure that all citizens can freely access the digital world? What are some great practices that enhance web accessibility for all?
Dive in deeper on this topic with Ginger by reading her blog post.
Video recording from the 9th Geneva Engage Awards
Winners of the 9th Geneva Engage Awards
International Organisations
Non-Governmental Organisations and Associations
Permanent Representations
Effective and Innovative Events
Accessibility Award
Honourable Mentions
Methodology
In the main categories (international organisations, non-governmental organisations and associations, and permanent representations), we conducted quantitative analysis in three categories of data: social media outreach, web accessibility, and web relevancy.
Find out more in our data analysis report.
The analysis period spanned from 1 January to 15 December 2023.
X/Twitter
- Relative growth of followers
- Relative growth of following accounts
- Total number of tweets*
- Total interactions of tweets*
- Engagement rate per post*
Facebook^
- Relative growth of page likes
- Total number of posts
- Relative growth of the number of posts
- Total interactions of posts
- Engagement rate per post
Instagram^`
- Relative growth of followers
- Total number of posts
- Relative growth of the number of posts
- Total interactions of posts
- Engagement rate per post
* We only tracked the tweets whose original author was the account owner.
^ We did not track promoted/paid posts.
` For an Instagram account to be counted, it must b
To measure an organisation’s accessibility score, we used Google Chrome’s Lighthouse accessibility scoring. For each actor, we started at its main page and took the first 20 URLs directly linked to that page, providing that such URL is under the actor’s web domain. We ran the Lighthouse tool on all links (using the desktop display) and calculated an average score for that actor.
The tool audits for numerous indicators, such as accessible element names, sufficient contrast ratio of background and foreground colours, alt text in image elements, and discernible names of the links, to name a few.
For web relevancy, we took two metrics from the Geneva Digital Footprint methodology: raw score and average position.
Google ranking was used to estimate the relevance of Geneva actors’ online resources (e.g. websites) for countries and communities worldwide. The team examined the Google search results of Geneva-based actors from 50 cities worldwide, evaluating their performance as one searches for one of 500 topics: trade, healthcare, emerging technologies, humanitarian aid, etc. For each actor, whenever the actor’s domain appeared in Google’s top 10 search results, we assigned points on a scale from zero to ten depending on the position. Our first metric, the raw score, is the sum of all points awarded for every city and topic.
Additionally, the second metric represents an actor’s web domain’s average position whenever the latter appeared in the top 10 of Google’s search results.
You can read about the application and methodology and the data we use on the Geneva Digital Footprint page.
For the statistical analysis, we first determined outliers in each category (both in high and low ranges) by applying the interquartile range rule:
Where IQR is the interquartile range, Q1 and Q3 are the first and third quartiles, and OH and OL are high and low outliers, respectively.
We used the capping of values to compensate for differences in the raw values (i.e. everything above value X has the maximum number of points). We have used outliers as a capping point in our case. After this step, we used the following formula to calculate the ranking in the main array, which assigns points for the individual indicator for each organisation:
This way, we have rescaled the remaining values to a predetermined 25-point scale. The final result is the sum of points from each category.
What did Geneva tweet about?
In the 8th Geneva Engage Awards, Diplo’s AI and Data team enhanced the analysis of Geneva’s online outreach by identifying the most tweeted terms by Geneva-based organisations in the past year. You can slide through the key terms and trends from 2012 to 2022.
Previous awards
International organisations
Non-governmental organisations
Permanent representations
Effective and Innovative Online Meetings
Accessibility Award
The winners of the 7th Geneva Engage Awards are:
– United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) in the International organisations category
– Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance in the NGOs category
– Permanent Mission of the United States of America to the United Nations Office and other international organisations in Geneva in the Permanent representations category.
As in previous years, the social media engagement of one actor in each category outperformed that of other entities in Geneva by a very high margin. To this end, honourable mentions go to the following actors for their outstanding efforts, as well as the sheer quantity and quality of their social media activity:
– World Health Organisation (WHO) in the IOs category,
– World Economic Forum (WEF) in the NGOs category, and
– Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations and other international organisations in Geneva in the PRs category.
Online participation award
Following the tradition introduced in 2020, an additional Geneva Engage award is given for innovative and effective approaches to conducting remote meetings to encourage new developments for the effective interplay between traditional and online meetings. CERN is the recipient of this year’s award for implementing and maintaining the free, open-source service for online meetings ‘Indico’.
Read the press release from the event for more details on the 7th Geneva Engage Awards ceremony.
The 6th Geneva Engage Awards ceremony was held in February 2021. The three recipients of the awards were:
– Permanent Delegation of the European Union
– United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
– The New Humanitarian (TNH)
The Online Participation Award was given to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
For more details, please read the data analysis behind the awards.
The 5th Geneva Engage Awards ceremony was held in January 2020. The three recipients of the awards were:
– Permanent Mission of Norway to the UN in the Permanent Representations category
– Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in the International Organisations category
– The New Humanitarian in the Non-Governmental Organisations category
For more details, read the data analysis behind the awards.
The 4th Geneva Engage Awards ceremony was held in February 2019. The three recipients of the award were:
– Permanent Mission of Sweden to the United Nations, in the Permanent Representations category;
– International Air Transport Association (IATA), in the International Organisations category;
– Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisations (GAVI), in the Non-Governmental Organisations category.
For more details, read the analysis behind the awards.
The 3rd Geneva Engage Awards ceremony was held in December 2017. The three recipients of the award were:
– Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations in Geneva, in the Permanent Representations category;
– United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), in the International Organisations category;
– World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), in the Non-Governmental Organisations category.
For more details, read the event report and the methodology behind the awards.
The 2nd Geneva Engage Awards ceremony took place in February 2017. The three recipients of the award were:
– Permanent Mission of the United States of America to the United Nations Office and Other International Organisations in Geneva, in Permanent Representations category;
– World Health Organisation, in the International Organisations category;
– World Economic Forum, in the Non-Governmental Organisations category.
For more details, read the event report and the analysis behind the awards.
The 1st Geneva Engage Awards ceremony was held in January 2016 as part of the Geneva Engage Conference. The three recipients of the award were:
– Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Switzerland, in the Permanent Representations category;
– World Health Organisation, in the International Organisations category;
– World Wide Fund for Nature and Child Rights Connect, in the Non-Governmental Organisations category.
For more details, read the event report (PDF).
Photo Gallery
1st award
Held in January 2016 as part of the Geneva Engage Conference
2nd award
The 2nd Geneva Engage Awards ceremony took place in February 2017.
3rd award
The 3rd Geneva Engage Awards ceremony was held in December 2017.
4th award
The 4th Geneva Engage Awards ceremony was held in February 2019.
5th award
The 5th Geneva Engage Awards ceremony was held in January 2020.
