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.