Ukraine og Rusland er to af de mest succesfulde lande i Eurovisionen, Det Europæiske Melodi Grand Prix. I dette årtusinde har Rusland vundet én gang og haft 14 top-10 placeringer ud af 19 mulige, ...mens Ukraine har vundet tre gange og haft 11 ud af 17 sange i top-10.
Siden Sovjetunionens opløsning har Eurovisionen været en af de få internationale arenaer, hvor de tidligere sovjetrepublikker kunne repræsentere deres nationale identiteter og vise deres tilhørsforhold til Europa. Samtidig har sangkonkurrencen været en symbolsk kampplads, hvor russisk og ukrainsk tv har sat postsovjetiske konflikter i spil i sange og sceneshows.
Denne artikel undersøger, hvordan ukrainsk og russisk tv har brugt Eurovisionen til at positionere sig i forhold til Europa og i forhold til hinanden. Den undersøger den politiske interesse, der er for Eurovisionen i Ukraine og Rusland, og den undersøger også, hvordan konkurrenceformatet og European Brodcasting Union (EBU) har bidraget til repræsentationen af postsovjetiske konflikter i det tv-show, der vises for seerne i Europa og i store dele af verden.
Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest examines how the Eurovision Song Contest has reflected and become intertwined with the history of postwar Europe from a political perspective.
...Established in 1956, the Eurovision Song Contest is the world's largest popular music event and one of the most popular television programmes in Europe, currently attracting a global audience of around 200 million people. Eurovision is often mocked as cultural kitsch because of its over-the-top performances and frivolous song lyrics. Yet there is no cultural medium that connects Europeans more than popular music, the development of which has always been tied to cultural, economic, political, social and technological change - making Eurovision the ideal tool to explain the history of Europe in the last sixty years. This book uses Eurovision as a vehicle to address topics ranging from the Cold War, liberal democracy and communism to nationalism, European integration, economic prosperity and human rights. It analyses these subjects through their cultural, political and social relationships with Eurovision entries as expressed through lyrics and music, as well as by examining public debates that have accompanied the selection of the entries and the organisation of the contest itself. Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest also considers how states have used Eurovision to define their identities in a European context, be it to assert their national distinctiveness, highlight political issues or affirm their Europeanism or Euroscepticism in the context of European integration.
Based on original sources, including hitherto unpublished archival documents from international broadcasting organisations, this is a novel historical study of interest to anyone keen to know more about the postwar history of Europe and its cultural history in particular.
Cultural proximity and trade Felbermayr, Gabriel J.; Toubal, Farid
European economic review,
02/2010, Volume:
54, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Cultural proximity is an important determinant of bilateral trade volumes. However, empirical quantification and testing are difficult due to the elusiveness of the concept and lack of observability. ...This paper draws on bilateral score data from the Eurovision Song Contest, a very popular pan-European television show, to construct a measure of cultural proximity which varies over time and within country pairs, and that correlates strongly with conventional indicators. Within the framework of a theory-grounded gravity model, we show that our measure positively affects trade volumes even if controlling for standard measures of cultural proximity and bilateral fixed effects.
•Conceptually, we coin the concept of ‘recurrent events’.•Theoretically, we draw from resonance theory to conceptualize constellations of cultural change around recurrent events.•Methodologically, we ...construct a unique publicly available dataset of Eurovision lyrics and social beliefs data in 18 European countries between 1981 and 2021.•Empirically, we identify six different constellations of cultural change around Eurovision in regard to narratives about gender and sexual identity and national identity.
Sociologists usually conceptualize events as unexpected occurrences bringing about long-lasting transformations of social structures. Following this definition, most empirical studies of events focus on pre/post-measurement strategies. Yet not all events are unexpected (e.g., Eurovision, Oscar nominations, the Olympics). Moreover, pre/post-measurements cannot capture the temporality in which meaning-making processes unfold nor account for the overlap between various events. We address these shortcomings by introducing the concept of ‘recurrent events,’ defined as events occurring with regular and recurrent cadence, charging collective effervescence and anticipation among audiences. Drawing from resonance theory, we conceptualize constellations of cultural change happening around recurrent events. We provide an empirical proof-of-concept, focusing on the case of the Eurovision Song Contest. To do so, we build a unique dataset of Eurovision lyrics and public attitudes in 18 European countries between 1981 and 2021 to study the relationships between attitudes about sexual and gender identity and national identity and the corresponding narratives presented at Eurovision. Our findings complicate common assumptions about the duality of events, by highlighting six different configurations of cultural change. We demonstrate how the concept of recurrent events contributes to the literature on events, consider the theoretical and methodological implications, and provide recommendations for future research.
It is 1979 in Jerusalem. The 24th Eurovision Song Contest has just ended and the Belgian singer Micha Marah is furious. Her song “Hey Nana” was ranked eighteenth and finished last, tied with Austria. ...However Micha had warned the Belgian committee: she would have preferred to sing another song called “How it goes”, but might as well make the little Manneken pee in a violin. A controversy on the choice of the song to which is added a last place: all Belgium is in commotion. It will be necessary...
In recent years, the opinion that the Eurovision Song Contest has become highly politicised is prevalent in the media and the popular voice, although not much research exists that can attest to this ...claim. In this work we conduct a case study that applies sentiment and discourse analysis methodologies to the assessment of political opinions in social media regarding this artistic and social event. The main objective is to explore to what extent and in what form this supposed politicisation has an expression on Twitter, as illustrated by the cases of artists Sam Ryder and James Newman, the United Kingdom’s representatives in the 2022 and 2021 editions of the contest, respectively. We examine references to two historical-political contexts that have had a severe impact on the European society over the last few years, and which have determined, among many other social aspects, the reception of Eurovision results ever since they took place: Brexit and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Eurovision Song Contest is officially a non-political event but has nevertheless been a useful tool for participating nations’ public and cultural diplomacy strategies. While Eurovision’s ...diplomatic utility for states is subject to much scholarly attention, little attention has been paid to how fans and audiences participate actively in these processes as political agents and actors. Drawing upon the frameworks of public diplomacy and participatory culture, this article puts forth the portmanteau concept of ‘participatory diplomacy’ to explain and explore how Eurovision illuminates a particular intersection of public diplomacy and participatory culture wherein the audience actively participates in its cultural platform to shape its political message and meaning.
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