Miss World Multimedia Award: Is this contest really needed? [Opinion]

Miss World Multimedia Award: Is it Necessary?

Miss World Multimedia Award is a part of Miss World pageant since past few years.  As part of this contest, the girls are updating about their preparations for the pageant, their social work, their wardrobe, their stay during the pageant and other things.  Based on their interactions with fans on various social media channels, a winner is chosen.  This year the format is slightly different but it still largely revolves around the usage of social media and interactions with the fans.  Many fans believe that this contest is actually quite unnecessary and we are a part of that group.

Further Reading: How Miss World is better at using Social Media than Miss Universe

Our first argument is that popularity on socia media channels doesn’t really speak much about the girls.  Of course, it is not about just the “likes” or “followers”, it about the actual interaction.  But then there are some countries where pageants are largely followed and so people from those countries will interact more with the representatives of their countries.  Girls from Philippines and India have highly popular Facebook pages.  Even if girls from say Mauritius or Lesotho interact well on social media, they will not have followers with whom they can interact.  They won’t get a fair chance to show their skill of using social media effectively.  Plus, even though it is said that no. of likes or followers don’t make a difference, they do have an effect on anyone who tries to evaluate.  It is human nature to gravitate towards what more people tend to gravitate to.  We are yet to see a small country win this award.

Further Reading: Rolene Strauss – Queen of Facebook

Our second argument is that someone else can update the pages on behalf of the girl and make her the winner.  There is no way to ensure that only the girls use their accounts on Facebook & Twitter.  A contestant can share her password with another friend and they can use the social media for posting things.  While some girls may be genuinely participating in the contest, others may even take professional help to get their works done.  In fact we there have been unverified reports about a Miss World Multimedia Award winner having taken external help to win.  This year Miss World pageant had 2 segments where girls were judged based on how their social media was used.  Was there anyway to ensure that girls did their postings themselves?  No.

Further Reading: Importance of good online personality for Beauty Queens

The only benefit to Miss World Organization is that the pageant and the girls are promoted because of the contest.  But really, how does the contest make sense if there is no transparency or mechanism to ensure the fairness of the process.  Most of the girls would anyway use their social media to promote themselves.  They can keep a special award for this, but connecting it to the final leaderboard and placements is going way too far.

Thus, to conclude, Miss World Organizers may consider scrapping Miss World Multimedia Award as a Challenger event whose points get added to the final leader-board and only keep it as a special award like “Dress Designer’s Award”.  A girl should not be penalised or kept away from Miss World title just because she is not that skillful with usage of social media.  Miss World Organization can hire professionals to help the winner if need be.  If they want to continue the Miss World Multimedia Award as a major contest, they should figure out a way to ensure that only the girl herself is using the social media channels, which in our knowledge is impossible.

Image Credits: Miss World