The EBU has just released jury vote and televote details for the recent Eurovision Song Contest final and two semi finals, which throw up some interesting findings. These details can be now viewed (http://www NULL.eurovision NULL.tv/page/news?id=18893&_t=EBU+reveals+split+voting+outcome%2C+surprising+results) on the official Eurovision webpage. In this post, I will tease out some of the more interesting trends emerging from a comparison of the televote and jury vote patterns. Continue Reading

Audio recordings of all the presentations from the ERN Inaugural Symposium held at the University of Oslo in Norway on Friday 28 May 2010 are available below, along with abstracts of presentations.

WELCOME
Arnt Maasø – Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway

INTRODUCTION: Setting the Agenda for Eurovision Studies
Toni Sant – School of Arts & New Media, University of Hull, Scarborough Campus, UK.

ERN MEMBER PRESENTATIONS

The Eurovision Song Contest and the problem of “quality”
Mari Pajala – Media Studies Department, University of Turku, Finland.

Eurovision:  It’s oh so queer
Peter Rehberg – Editor-in-chief, Männer magazine, Germany.

Eurovision and the “New” Europe
Karen Fricker – Department of Drama and Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London & Milija Gluhovic – School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick, UK.

Nation Branding and Image Building Through Popular Culture: A Case Study of Estonia and Ukraine
Paul Jordan – Department of Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow, UK.

National Differences at the Eurovision Song Contest: The Seven Essential & Interconnected “Dimensions of Meaning”
Irving Wolther – HMTH Institute for Journalism and Communication Studies, Hannover, Germany.

The Global Networking of Irish Eurovision Song Contest Fans
Brian Singleton – Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

RESPONSE
Apostolos Lampropoulos – Department of French, University of Cyprus.

Hello all!

Thanks to all who attended our events for a great week in Oslo, and thanks to everyone who wasn’t there for logging into the site to keep up with all the news.

We more than doubled our membership during the Contest week!

Could we ask all of you a favour: we would like to keep track of media activity about the ERN and/or about individual members’ work as ESC researchers that has recently appeared, as well as any media activity that our members have themselves generated. Could you therefore comment on this post with listings (hopefully including web links) to any such activity?

This will be particularly useful from those of you who work outside the English language, because it’s difficult for us to track non-English activity.

Here are some that I know of to get the ball rolling:

Financial Times (http://tinyurl NULL.com/3acnz4z) feature (http://tinyurl NULL.com/3acnz4z) about Eurovision in the time of austerity

Guardian (http://tinyurl NULL.com/349sptm) blog (http://tinyurl NULL.com/349sptm) on the same topic

BBC blog (http://tinyurl NULL.com/2ws9bjj) on the same topic (do we see a pattern forming)?

Sydney Morning Herald (http://tinyurl NULL.com/37lxvqx) (http://tinyurl NULL.com/37lxvqx)feature about guess what

Dutch newspaper feature (http://www NULL.gelderlander NULL.nl/specials/songfestival/6746315/Wetenschappelijke-studie-naar-het-Songfestival NULL.ece)about Eurovision research

English-language German newspaper feature (http://tinyurl NULL.com/2umdnhd)about the Lena phenomenon

Article about Eurovision research in the Norwegian broadsheet Aftenposten (http://www NULL.aftenposten NULL.no/meninger/kronikker/article3666450 NULL.ece) (one of three about our work published during Eurovision week!)

My Irish Times (http://tinyurl NULL.com/33vqqwv)preview piece (http://tinyurl NULL.com/33vqqwv)about why Eurovision mattered more to Ireland this year (OK, OK, it’s the same angle as everyone else…)

My analysis in the (http://tinyurl NULL.com/39tnky3)Irish Times (http://tinyurl NULL.com/39tnky3) of the results

We look forward to hearing from you about coverage you may know about!

Thanks

Karen (and Phil and Toni)

As everyone in the ERN knows Eurovision uses  a Borda count to tabulate scores. Each country allocates points to their 10 favourites. However, rather than allocate 10 points to the first ranked and 9 to the second, first place earns 12 points; 2nd 10 points. The idea is to skew the vote in favour of top-ranked scores…and to reduce the possibility of tie scores.

Using the awesome data available from here (http://www NULL.myledbury NULL.co NULL.uk/eurovision/)I yanked the Borda count down to a normal count. Pretty simple really: convert the 10 point allocations to 9, the 12 point ones to 10.  Doesn’t change the results, but does give a clearer idea of how closely the songs scored.  The italicized songs are the top 10 for each night. Continue Reading