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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Voting in Eurovision
T2 - shared tastes or cultural epidemic?
AU - Gatherer, Derek
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - Apparent vote-exchange ("logrolling") in the Eurovision Song Contest has been variously interpreted as a manifestation of political attitudes within Europe, a reflection of regional tastes in pop music, or a social (memetic) epidemic. This paper provides data supporting the third of these three options, also demonstrating that the cultural contagion has now nearly reached saturation. As well as logrolling, ethnic diasporas and the "semi-final effect" are also shown to influence the result of the contest. Reform of the voting system to produce a contest which better rewards musical excellence, without suppressing the mass participation element, is therefore a complex problem.
AB - Apparent vote-exchange ("logrolling") in the Eurovision Song Contest has been variously interpreted as a manifestation of political attitudes within Europe, a reflection of regional tastes in pop music, or a social (memetic) epidemic. This paper provides data supporting the third of these three options, also demonstrating that the cultural contagion has now nearly reached saturation. As well as logrolling, ethnic diasporas and the "semi-final effect" are also shown to influence the result of the contest. Reform of the voting system to produce a contest which better rewards musical excellence, without suppressing the mass participation element, is therefore a complex problem.
M3 - Journal article
VL - 3
SP - 72
EP - 83
JO - Empirical Text and Culture Research
JF - Empirical Text and Culture Research
SN - 1617-8912
ER -