The last assignments

After one week this course is over! Hope the students have enjoyed and learned at least almost as much as the professors!

Peer feedback is an elementary part of this course!

The last team assignment is to give peer feedback for the second group project outcome. Some teams have already started!

• Team Austria will assess team Spain report, 
• team Ireland will give feedback to team Austria, 
• team UK will share their thoughts about team Ireland's effort, 
• team Finland will do an evaluation of the outcome made by team UK and 
• team Spain will make their review of the report produced by the Finland team.

There will also be two individual tasks, both about feedback. You will find them in your email very soon.

The deadline for all student input of this course is Wednesday 28th May. Thank you!

Team project #2 - Team Spain

The Spanish representative during this year's Eurovision Song Contest, performed in Copenhaguen was Ruth Lorenzo Pascual. She is a singer that became quite popular during her performances in the well known talent show "X-factor". Very few years after that, she was selected to represent Spain for the song contest performing "Dancing in the rain". She was one of the most liked singers of Spain to take part in the competition of the last years. She finally finished on the 9th place, one of the best results in the recent years for Spain, in the contest.

In order to have a concrete analysis we’ve reduced the questions in this four summary questions:

• What kind of campaign does Ruth Lorenzo and TVE have on Facebook and Twitter? (We have decided not to study the label record because we didn’t find any relevant campaign in it)

• Which are the differences between the use of Twitter and Facebook?

• Are there fan communities in other countries? How do these communities operate?

• What is done to attract the audiences in other countries? (This question is explain throughout the whole results)

The use of the social networks has had a vital importance in the contest. It has mainly had an effect to Eurovision itself as an interactive show. Therefore, it has also affected the artists that took part in it. Among those, we obviously find Ruth Lorenzo’s professional career. The non use of Twitter and Facebook would have clearly decreased the importance (or at least the level of followers and spectators) of the show. While we were investigating for the project, we found an enormous amount of Spanish people not only on the social networks but also in the real life, that Eurovision without Twitter would not have been the same, or that they would not have watched it.  This has made things much easier for us: nowadays everybody uses social networks so it has been easier to follow all the process of the Song Contest and the final show.

The fact is that Eurovision is not a very followed and respected show in Spain, as it is always said that our country basically takes part in it just to lose the contest. Moreover, it is also very criticized  the fact of being in the “Big Five” and paying every year an amount of money basically just for being in the final without having to pass the semifinals (if we take in consideration Spanish current economic situation).

We have noticed that Ruth has a little bit more activity on Twitter than on Facebook. However, the contents are quite similar despite the fact that she has more important stuff in Facebook than in Twitter. Something similar happens with the account of TVE, the Spanish public television responsible for the broadcast of the contest and supporter of every year’s singer.

Ruth manages her own Twitter and Facebook pages, posting professional but also personal content, fact that can be interesting for her followers. Thanks to Eurovision she has gained a high number of followers, previously she was barely known; despite she is a professional singer since 2010. Apart from Eurovsion she also got a top hit in her career when she performed in the British talent show “X-Factor”.

The amount of people following her increased, as we said, during the previous weeks and months of the performance. That also had an effect on the fan clubs. There were many fan pages in the social networks as well as in blogs, forums and even YouTube. However, most of this accounts have something in common… They were created during the highest peak of popularity of the singer and also had the more amount of activity during the previous days of her performance: They are not used anymore

FOR READING THE FULL REPORT CLICK HERE

Team project #2 - Team Austria

THE WIENER TAKES IT ALL

Put a man with an outstanding voice in an evening gown to perform a Bond-like song on stage of Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), and you get all sorts of mixed reactions from the audience. Add a beard like a tangle of dry brush and you get a controversy of a kind. Say this artist passionately supports LGBT community and the whole bearded persona is a “statement of tolerance and provocative at the same time”, and you get an international criticism and a massive political resonance. Oh, and choose a song with breathtaking lyrics and music, that will get stuck in your head, making you sing it in the shower every morning.This year Austria managed to do all of it and win the competition. Austrian drag-queen, Conchita Wurst, is an excellent example of how to make a manly beard a continent-wide trend and annoy anti-gay politicians and activists all over Europe. Beardy lady stole thousands of hearts and made fans around the world knitting beards to express their support. 

 

And it’s not surprising, that since the participation announcement back in November, the news about Frau Wurst spread like wildfire and Austrian Eurovision music video “Rise like a phoenix” went viral in a matter of days (you can watch the video here). 

Team project #2 - Team UK

The UK contestant for Eurovision was Molly Smitten-Downes. Her song was Children of the Universe. Molly didn’t manage to gain huge success in the contest. We researched how Twitter and Facebook was used in promoting her, what was her presence like in social media and did this change during the whole period of Eurovision song contest.

Some of our research questions:

- What kind of campaign does the representative of UK have on Facebook and Twitter?

- How does Molly interact with people and has her social media presence changed during the Eurovision period?

- What is the content like posted in social media, more straight-forward promotional, or personal?

- What is done to attract the audiences in other countries?

Molly seemed to be new in the music field, so in the beginning she didn’t have too many fan communities, fans or followers considering she is from the UK. Her popularity was rapidly expanding, starting from the beginning of the contest and specially since she became the representative of the UK. At the time of the semifinals there had been an increase in people’s activity on Facebook, and even new fan pages have been made since.

In our opinion, Molly was trying hard to create a community around her and her team, but did not manage to do this so well in the end. Her presence was somewhat personal and she shared a lot of pictures, retweeted fan tweets and had some minor interaction with fans. Still, she didn’t manage to create too much social media popularity, and we felt that maybe it was because it felt a bit forced at times. Her fanbase did grow, but probably not as much as was expected.

BBC used many of their channells to promote Molly. On Twitter BBC campainging for her, was quite effective and they reached a lot of people in the UK and abroad.  During Eurovision Contest BBC was also very active and constantly cheering for Molly, but also commenting on other contestants. BBC Eurovision managed to get Molly’s fanbase very active on Twitter.

In the end we can say that social media had big part in this Eurovision song contest. Social media platforms were used actively for promotional and informative purposes. The contest and her team and BBC had a strong online presence during the weeks before and during the competition. Even though most of the content posted was mainly meant to raise awareness, support and excitement among people in the UK, they probably managed to reach Eurovision fans all over Europe.

Full report: here.

Team project #2 - Team Finland

On our second team assignment we researched how Finnish rock band Softengine used social media for community building and promotion during Eurovision 2014. Softengine was Finland’s representative in 2014 Eurovision song contest. They got to the final from the second semifinal and reached 11^th place on the competition. They currently have a record deal with Sony Music.

On our research we tried to find answers to following questions:

•  Does Finnish representative, Softengine, have campaigns in Facebook and Twitter?

• Does Softengine’s record company have campaigns in Facebook and Twitter?

•  Are there some fan communities in other coutries, which countries and what are they doing in order to attract the audiences?

Both the band and the record company have their accounts in Facebook and Twitter, and the band is very active also in Instagram. Most of the promotion was done by the band themselves; before and during the Eurovision competition active promotion focused in Twitter and Instagram. Record company on the other hand seems to save their marketing efforts to later date.

In Facebook the band has their band pages and closed fan community. In Twitter majority of their followers are outside from Finland, mainly female in their teens or early 20’s. Some individuals and groups in Twitter actively promoted the band during Eurovision, for example “Echelons” in Finland and Russia asked all fans to vote for them. In Russia the main platform for support has been Russian social network, Russia vk.com, where currently 15 fan communities for Softengine can be found.  

As conclusion we can say, that while there seems to be very little active fan communities around the band regarding Eurovision, it is clear that the band has received international attention in various social media. Their 24000 likes in Facebook or 14000 followers in Twitter are proof of that. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Russian social networks are platforms for discussion among the fans and show clear signs of community building in general.

Link to complete report: Final Report of Team Finland

Team project #2 - Team Ireland

Summary:

In our research we go through Irelands representatives campaign for Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in the social media and share some light on why their campaign wasn't very successful in the end.

We answer such research questions as:

- What kind of campaign does the representative of Ireland have on Facebook and Twitter?

- Are there fan communities in other countries? How do these communities operate?

- How does the representative use social media when the voting process is ongoing?

Irelands representative for Eurovision Song Contest 2014 was band named Can-Linn, featuring a Dublin-based singer Kasey Smith. They performed at the second semifinal 8.5.2014, but did not make it to the grand final.

Can-Linn had it’s own social media channels on Twitter, Youtube and Facebook. From these Twitter and Facebook were researched more closely, since they had more visible interaction. The most interaction with the fanbase happened through Twitter, but Facebook was a close second. The hashtag #YesWeCanLinn was used to promote the performers and to try and make it a trending hashtag on Twitter. Their interaction on the social media channels changed through the course of the campaign, the peak being on May 8th when the 2nd Semi-Final was held.

Read more about our research on our complete research report, which can be found HERE.