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Partisanship at Eurovision is becoming more blatant
- montrose 8y agoI love it when people doing bad things get busted by statistical traces they didn't even realize they were leaving. There is a lot more room for this kind of detective work.
- r3bl 8y agoI'm from one of those countries in the list. It has been known that this is the case and that countries vote for neighbors ever since I've first watched Eurovision (in like 2007). I'm really surprised that this isn't common knowledge outside of the circle.
- mcv 8y agoThese results are not remotely surprising to anyone. It's been long known that closely related countries tend to vote for each other. And it's not really a matter of people doing bad things, it's simply the general public voting for what they like. It doesn't have to be political at all; maybe people just tend to like songs that are culturally close them. Look at the graph: Ukraine and Russia vote for each other a lot, despite their political friction.
- notahacker 8y agoThe other thing is that the "general public" isn't a homogenous bloc. Political friction might make some members of the 2 million strong ethnic Ukrainian diaspora in Russia more inclined to make gestures of support for Ukraine in television song contests, for example. That public vote from within Russia doesn't get cancelled out if a much larger segment of the Russian public finds songs alluding to Stalinist annexation of the Crimea and repression of the Crimean Tartars actively objectionable.
- M2Ys4U 8y ago>And it's not really a matter of people doing bad things, it's simply the general public voting for what they like. It doesn't have to be political at all; maybe people just tend to like songs that are culturally close them. Voting isn't just by popular vote, though. Each country has a jury which allocates half of the votes and the other half are allocated based on televoting.
- ekianjo 8y agoDecentralize the vote to the public and you destroy the risk of collusion. This is endemic in centralized systems.
- ghba66 8y agoDecentralize the vote to the public if you want to see botnets voting. No thanks.
- mcv 8y agoVoting is done by phone or SMS and costs a couple of cents. As far as I know, it's totally legal to vote more, but that means you pay more.
- tormeh 8y agoI think this should be changed. I cannot imagine that this pay-to-win mechanic has any positive effects.
- seszett 8y agoWell it does discourage bots, and it finances the contest. I don't really see big downsides, as it's not very expensive either.
- John_KZ 8y agoUsually it's more than a few cents (i think 0.5 to 2 euros). This is actually a great way to vote and fund the contest at the same time. There's little financial incentive to cheat (it's not like a lottery) so if you spend more money, on average, you care more. Also the amount each individual spends in generally very small (ie a handful of votes) so it's about as democratic as this can get without involving some kind of state-id based authentication.
- braythwayt 8y agoWould you say the same thing about actual elections? Should billionairres be allowed to buy millions of votes because they care more? Should nations buy votes as a from of propaganda?
- the_mitsuhiko 8y agoI think half the fun of watching it is the collusion.
- braythwayt 8y agoThere's a morbid joke that "International Figure Skating is a team sport, played by judges." Perhaps it isn't popular in spite of the collusion, but because of it.
- nabla9 8y agoThat's exactly the point of Eurovision. Eurovision is harmless entertainment where people can participate and play the game any way they want. You can make political or cultural points by voting, or create fads and feuds, show solidarity etc. A Finnish horror rock band wearing masks won because people found it funny to rebel against typical second rate pop from second rate stars. Bearded man in drag won because people realized that they could trigger homophobes. Ukraine won 2004, the same year as there was the Orange revolution in Ukraine. Ukraine won again 2016. Maybe it had something to do with the War in Donbass.
- dagurp 8y agoOr maybe these were the best songs
- blensor 8y agoAnd even more so when a country manages to break that collusion and win despite the odds that are against them
- sincerely 8y agoWhy is this on HN?
- icebraining 8y agoPapers published in scientific journals are often discussed on HN.
- braythwayt 8y agoThe original rationale for whether something belongs on HN was "anything that provokes the submitter's intellectual curiosity." That skews towards tech, but all sorts of other things fit inside that "big tent" of ideas.
- Y_Y 8y agoNot everyone on HN is American. The Eurovision is interesting to a lot of the Anglosphere elsewhere, like the UK, Ireland and Australia.
- SyneRyder 8y agoAnd to indicate the size of popularity, Eurovision gets ratings of 182 Million viewers [1], which is roughly equal with the 172 Million who watch the Superbowl [2] [1] https://eurovision.tv/story/Eurovision-2017-reaches-more-than-180-million https://eurovision.tv/story/Eurovision-2017-reaches-more-tha... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_television_ratings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_television_ratings
- sexydefinesher 8y agoThe nordic brotherhood is strong
- deallocator 8y agoCan anyone post a link that's not behind a paywall?
- icebraining 8y agoHere's the original paper, which is in an open access journal: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/21/1/1.html http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/21/1/1.html
- Krasnol 8y agoLooks like paywalls become more blatant
- montrose 8y agoTry Mercury Reader, which can see through this and several other paywalls (and does a great job of cleaning up cluttered sites).
- zakk 8y agohttp://archive.is/ojbuw http://archive.is/ojbuw
- tormeh 8y agoWhy is there a link between Britain and Germany?
- isodev 8y agoAfter all, EU countries don't exist in isolation and we are heavily influenced by our neighbours (economically, culturally, politically). It only makes sense that this influence makes its way into Eurovision. I think the "partisanship" between countries is part of the spectacle.
- ldjb 8y agoI'm not sure what the EU has to do with anything or why EU countries should be different from any of the other competing countries. I suppose the "partisanship" can be interesting to observe, but considering all the hard work each of the acts have to do I feel it's a shame that they are judged mainly on geographical and political factors rather than on their musical ability and performance.
- repolfx 8y agoDespite the name Eurovision is nothing to do with the EU. That's why Israel, Ukraine and Russia sometimes compete. Actual eligibility is defined by a relic of the early television broadcasting industry, the "European Broadcasting Area" the borders of which correspond to, I think, early telegraph networks.
- ldjb 8y agoExactly. Eurovision is not related to the European Union. Technically, it doesn't even have anything to do with Europe; Australia have been competing in recent years. Eligibility simply requires the country to have a broadcaster that is a member of the European Broadcasting Union.
- perlgeek 8y ago> There has been no such glory for the so-called “Big Five”, who qualify for the final automatically: Germany, Britain, France, Spain and Italy. These countries have rarely collaborated with anyone. I think I remember some "collaborations" between Turkey and Germany, mostly because of the migration and holiday connections between the two countries. Not sure if that's statistically significant though.
- Tomte 8y agoYes, Germany always gives 12 points to Turkey, because Turks are the biggest minority.
- cJ0th 8y agoI wonder if the "big 5" would score higher if they weren't qualified for the finals by default. That way their songs would get a lot more exposure and become more familiar to the voters. Usually, people like best what they know.
- ldjb 8y agoIn my experience, most people only watch the final, so I'm not sure that would make a major difference. And of course, considering how poorly the Big Five perform, it's likely they won't even make it into the final! It would be interesting to see the results of such an experiment, though.
- furiens 8y agoStatistically, you would expect them to score higher if that was the case, because it would no longer allow them to be worse than the worst song to qualify.
- repolfx 8y agoThat would wreck Eurovision though. The reason these countries qualify automatically is because they pay for it, and it's expensive to host. The BBC has hosted Eurovision way more times than most other countries.
- furiens 8y agoThe effects of partisanship are hugely outweighed by the fact that each country gives points to 10 others, not just one. An extreme case of both the 10 and 12 points going to non-deserving neighbours still leaves 36 points to go elsewhere.
- ldjb 8y agoExcept that for countries with lots of neighbours, they're likely to consistently receive 10 or 12 points. Sure, other countries will also receive points, but far fewer, and therefore they are at a disadvantage.
- zakk 8y agoNon-paywalled link: http://archive.is/ojbuw http://archive.is/ojbuw
- aleken 8y agoGood luck tonight! I know I will most likely collude.