Understanding the Eurovision Song Contest in Multicultural Australia by Jessica Carniel

Author:Jessica Carniel
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030023157
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Fans often use a combination of both hashtags , depending upon how they wish to access the conversation occurring, allowing them to either shift between or to merge their virtual loungerooms of the global #Eurovision and the local #SBSEurovision . SBS chose to abandon #SBSEurovision in 2018 in favour of #Eurovision in order to be part of a global conversation. This complicated SBS’s own use of #SBSEurovision as a production element of the delayed broadcast , in which fan tweets are posted on the screen, as fans watching the delayed broadcast complained of spoilers and even tweets that were clearly posted by people outside of Australia who were not watching the SBS broadcast. Although SBS attempted to steer fans toward their specially-created Facebook group for localised conversation, many on Twitter used the local hashtag defiantly (although some were simply not aware of the change). By persisting with #SBSEurovision , Australian viewers expressed a desire and need to conduct their own national conversation that addressed the idiosyncrasies of Australian time, place, and commentary , even as they valued participation in a global event.

While some fans might express a sense of loss or nostalgia for the old way of celebrating Eurovision, few express a sense of loneliness about watching the live broadcast , even if they are watching it alone in their physical space. The phenomenon of synchronous online conversations about television programs is known as “social TV ” (Buschow et al. 2014, 129). Highfield et al. (2013) use the analogy of the “virtual lounge room ” to signify the “communal space where audience members can come together to discuss and debate, in real time, their responses to what they are watching on the television screen,” much as one would in one’s own living room . As suggested above, hashtags play an important role in helping viewers to identify one another and to define the space—the walls of the lounge room, so to speak—in which the conversation occurs. Social media means that the conversation about and, by extension, the party for Eurovision is occurring on a broader level that both is and is not defined by geographical space and time. Individuals are gathered around their own “modern hearths,” but all these hearths may be installed in the same “virtual lounge room.”

Watching Eurovision is not a static, passive, or uniform act for its fans. While they value the text itself, they also clearly value its capacity for interaction and sociality. Australian fans of Eurovision are highly aware of the song contest as a constructed television event and yet it is something that they value highly because it offers them a sense of community and connection through the means of fun and entertainment. While Australian participation in the contest and the subsequent 5 a.m. live broadcast has disrupted some Eurovision traditions for Australian fans, it has also offered an opportunity to broaden and even deepen the communal experience of Eurovision from the physical and into virtual spaces of fan interaction and community. The challenges

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