‘All Kinds of Everything’? Queer Visibility in Online and Offline Eurovision Fandom

Abstract

The annual televisual spectacle, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is an international media event that is a nexus around which questions surrounding identity surface. This paper focuses specifically on the contest's active promotion of queer visibility, that intersects through national stage performances and its international fan base. It untangles the relationship between the contest and its problematic construction as a 'gay event' and how fans are increasingly using social media platforms to legitimise their fan and queer identities. Mainstream social media platforms, such as Twitter are an important site where issues surrounding queer visibility may be expressed and constructed. These ESC fan practices are contextualised in relation to literature surrounding male same-sex hookup apps which can inform our ideas surrounding queer code/space. It also suggests that fans self-regulate who or how they 'come out' as ESC fans which establishes an ESC closet because the ESC is prone to stigmatisation in some national contexts.

Towards a theory of participatory diplomacy via the Eurovision Song Contest

“…Equally, the large body of scholarship on Eurovision fans and audiences concentrates on their identities, communities and contributions to participatory culture (e.g. Fricker et al, 2007;Halliwell, 2018;Lemish, 2004;Waysdorf, 2021), but rarely their complicity and, importantly, their agency in the state-oriented rather than valued-based political dimensions of the song contest.…”

Nation Branding, Cultural Relations and Cultural Diplomacy at Eurovision: Between Australia and Europe

“…Scholars of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) have long focused on the significant political and economic roles the Contest plays for participating nations. They have shown it to be an important stage for performing the nation as new states emerged after the dismantling of the USSR (Jordan 2014;Meerzon and Priven 2013;Sieg 2013;Vuletic 2007), as both a drain and a boon to national and regional economies, and an important platform for a growing discourse of liberal gender politics as a European value (Halliwell 2018;Baker 2017;Carniel 2015;Lemish 2004). Like sporting events such as the Olympics, the Song Contest is perceived as a safe arena for national competitiveness to play out and for international relationships to be fostered, developed, or even be performed in more negative terms.…”

Did You Find the World or Did You Make it Up? Media, Communications and Geography in the Digital Age

“…While Schmitz Weiss touches upon the issues of Media (and Communications)-in-places -that is the way in which places have become altered through the fashion in which people use media and communications tools within those spaces -these topics are also dealt with at length by a number of other authors in this issue, Halliwell (2018, this issue), Brantner (2018, and Duggan (2018, this issue). Branter's paper takes up the complexities and difficulties in navigating a world that is entangled with geomedia.…”