Performando a europeidade: uma etnografia virtual no Eurovision Song Contest

Abstract

The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual music competition held in Europe since 1956. The initial project of the event involved the discourse of uniting the European continent through music given the end of World War II. This work sought to understand the meanings triggered by the different musical performances inscribed in the 2022 and 2023 festivals in a competitive context and of historical and continuous construction of the notion of Europeanity. It is understood that the great competitive music festivals mobilize and constitute different identity discourses about the social and geopolitical spaces in which they take place or from which the participants depart. In the case of Eurovision, meanings of "Europeanity" have long been articulated that hierarchize and organize the relations between the countries participating in the competition. In view of the objective outlined, the methodology adopted is that of virtual ethnography, taking into account the importance of the mediation of digital platforms in the last editions of the festival and its influence both on the construction and on the questioning and transformation of the notion of Europeanity. Another front of the proposed methodology, that of bibliographic research, contemplates the discussions on rituals and performances in the anthropological field, the specificities of competitive festivals in identity constructions and the specificity of virtual ethnography in relation to contemporary phenomena that have digital media as their support and fundamental articulator. The field observation carried out virtually revealed contradictions and resistances to the profile of the performances expected by the festival's organization – that of a "voice of Europe" – as well as the influence of contemporary political phenomena present in social networks, such as digital populism, giving complexity to the notion of Europeanity engendered in and by the festival.