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Post by shanfachai on Nov 19, 2021 13:39:51 GMT 1
Sorry, Italy. Just found my new winner.
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drj
0 points
10
1
One of the millions of fans of European-based song contests around the world, not in Europe
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Post by drj on Nov 20, 2021 13:12:42 GMT 1
In my previous post, I explained why France won Junior Eurovision. Executive Summary: Valentina Tronel was a child superstar from Kids United who had 300,000 followers on Instagram. If they voted even twice, votes for other countries did not matter. More so because of the "first past the post" voting system on JESC, which made 16% of the total vote a "Valentinaslide". I started looking for what we could learn from that in 2021. Of course, the first place to check was France. Enzo Hilaire, representing France, has a catchy little song, arguably better than "J'Imagine", he sings like Valentina (SOUNDS like her)and the contest being hosted in France could bring out more French voters than usual. Mais pauvre Enzo has only 11,000 followers on Instagram and is virtually unknown outside France. Valentina could try to bring out her 300,000 votes for France this year but: (1) she tried for Barbara Pravi in Eurovision 2021 and fell on her cute little smile (2) she tried (admittedly did not campaign on instagram like she did in 2020)in the "Other Songs" JESC 2021 song contest, where most of the votes come from instagram, for herself and she could not break into the top 10. It seems her voters are tapped out or at least not motivated like in 2020. France is a dark horse: possible but not probable. Well, where do we find the winners? On instagram, of course! Instagram is the kids' favourite social media site. Little ones don't tweet often or read volumes on facebook. They like to look at tik-tok too but people don't make a presence there: it is good for one-off videos. Top JESC 2021 candidate on instagram is Sara Egwu-James, representing Poland. She has 121,000 followers on sara_james_music and some other instagram accounts too (which may be double-countable followers from the first account). She is a winner of the Voice Kids in Poland, which probably accounts for the followers. She is not a superstar like Valentina but she is running at the top of most Youtube polls for JESC 2021 so far, probably on her instagram followers as a base. Sara is more like Viki Gabor, the winner in 2019, than like Ala Tracz, who proved how little talent counts for in today's broadcaster-packaged JESC in 2020. Sara is 12: Viki was 12 and Ala was 9. It makes a difference. Most of the Polish masses who smothered the other candidates' votes in 2018-2019 are tweens and teens, not little children. They vote for a candidate they identify with. They like to pretend that THEY are up on stage. They came out in droves for Viki and 14 year old Roxana but little Ala didn't move them. Sara could. Also, like Viki, who had lived in England, Sara is fluent in English (hers is one of the few songs that STARTS in English, not just throws a few lines of English in the chorus). Her father is Nigerian (her mother is Polish and she was raised there), which accounts for her English fluency and one more advantage: like the biggest votegetter in JESC history, Destiny Chukunyere, whose father was Nigerian, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of non-white or immigrant children in Europe will identify with her, although some may go with Ayana Voss, of the Netherlands, whose parents are both immigrants to Europe (from Britain and Japan). At least Sara and Destiny were European enough not to sing in Igbo. In short, Poland is ahead and likely to come back as leader of musical young Europe. Break the kielbasa and pirogies out of the freezer. Poland, in 2018-2019, tended to pull votes from most of the other ex-Communist countries and may do so again. If so, as in the earlier years, some great songs from the Balkans and the Caucasus are going nowhere (Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Kazakhstan). Even voters in those countries to some extent find a certain status from voting with a Polish child with whom they could identify, believe that their countries do not have enough votes to have a chance at winning. But Poland is not a sure thing. At 113,000 instagram followers (now up to 120,000: 7,000 just this month!), Tatyana Mezhentseva is running 2nd in most youtube and JESC polls behind Sara. She has some strengths too. First, JESC watchers know her: she was Russia's candidate for JESC in 2019, in a duet with a Tuvan boy named Denberel Oorzhak. On the other hand, the memories are not pleasant: the duet was among those smothered by Viki's Polish cohorts and did not even get into the top 10. Yet Tanya proved this year, by winning the JESC's "Other Songs" contest, that her followers are mobilised NOW and ready to vote for her. Sara's followers have not been put to the test and Valentina's followers simply disappeared this autumn. Also, as Tanya is younger, she might appeal to more 10- voters than Sara, although it is not clear that enough of them vote to make a difference. While I did not see Tanya campaigning on instagram for "Other Contests", she is with the nda marketing group, which are quite capable of mobilising the Russian youth. On the other hand, nda are unknown outside Russia, although they probably have connections in those ex-Communist eastern European countries whose young people might instinctively vote for Poland and have a negative opinion of Russia for historical reasons. It was nda, or Other Contests, or both, who almost eliminated Sara Egwu-James' instagram follower lead this month. If they can turn those followers into votes and grow them as we have seen this month, Sara may be left crying into her barszcz with little Ala, wondering what happened. If the race gets close it will be a race to see how many Polish teens and tweens and how many Russian teens and tweens vote for their respective countries. So my prediction is, Poland will win, no one else matters except maybe Russia and Russia could pull off a sleeper surprise. You might be saying "But what about the songs?". As I explained in my previous posts, they no longer matter. Unlike 2003-2015 JESC, they are not even the children's songs (although some singers, like Sara, Ayana and Malena Fox of Armenia, obviously had some part in writing their songs). Today's JESC songs, like the children themselves, are packaged products of their national broadcasters. The days like 2005, when little Ksenia Sitnik, age 9, skipped and danced on to the stage, singing her original song, with almost no pre-performance marketing, and left all the pollsters open-mouthed and mute, are gone. Those were the days, my friend!
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1,899
4,449
la martiza c'est ma rivière
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Post by alex(a)bg on Nov 20, 2021 14:24:11 GMT 1
If only I could serve essays like that at university..
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drj
0 points
10
1
One of the millions of fans of European-based song contests around the world, not in Europe
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Post by drj on Nov 21, 2021 5:03:29 GMT 1
Thank you, Alexa, Anton, Aleks and others! Certainly, you could do. It's mostly research, not that much original there.
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Wys
4 points
they/them
1,515
1,865
down down in my doomsday blues
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Post by Wys on Nov 21, 2021 7:35:50 GMT 1
Really interesting thoughts, just a few of my responses just because some of the songs aren’t written by the contestants themselves (they weren’t required to write them earlier than 2015 btw, I forget the exact year), it means they are no deciding factor? The chance of Sara getting a lot of televotes due to being well known is likely And with the online voting system we don’t know where lots of votes are coming from, even if we did it wouldn’t be 100% accurate. We saw so many times last year and in the previous years that the winner is very surprising. Also a lot more Junior Eurovision votes come from actual fans rather than casual viewers due to the limited broadcasts (I wish my country broadcasted it again ) Also it seems the points you’ve made completely ignore 50% of the results, the jury voting. Jury voting in jesc is different to esc as music professionals only make up 60% of each jury. This means we don’t really see the same kind of songs being favoured by juries as we do in eurovision. Kazakhstan in jesc 2019 may not exactly prove my point but it’s such a common misconception in the whole fandom that ballads = high jury points. Jesc 2018 wales got 0 from the jury, and that was a ballad. Not exactly the most memorable, but this is the point. Really, just thinking about how well known the singers are doesn’t mean you can predict the winner. Also, you have to vote for 3-5 DIFFERENT countries, meaning you can’t continually spam vote for your favourites by giving 5 votes at a time The way I see it, this jesc is wide open and we can actually consider many countries as potential winners!
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Luiri
FBA Reference Group
he/him
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Post by Luiri on Nov 21, 2021 11:52:18 GMT 1
Also a lot more Junior Eurovision votes come from actual fans rather than casual viewers due to the limited broadcasts (I wish my country broadcasted it again ) that is where you're wrong, in JESC, just like in ESC, the fans doesn't represent anything at all, if the results were mostly from fans, in 2020, the online voting results would've been waaaay different, with probably a Spanish win in the online voting, and some countries that would've done better because they were appreciated by the fans (some example: Georgia or Poland), well, flopped in the actual results.
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Wys
4 points
they/them
1,515
1,865
down down in my doomsday blues
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Post by Wys on Nov 21, 2021 11:58:52 GMT 1
Also a lot more Junior Eurovision votes come from actual fans rather than casual viewers due to the limited broadcasts (I wish my country broadcasted it again ) that is where you're wrong, in JESC, just like in ESC, the fans doesn't represent anything at all, if the results were mostly from fans, in 2020, the online voting results would've been waaaay different, with probably a Spanish win in the online voting, and some countries that would've done better because they were appreciated by the fans (some example: Georgia or Poland), well, flopped in the actual results. yeah i didn’t really explain myself that well haha some countries (generally the ones that participate) promote the contest a lot more than others (even some that participate) and these countries have higher viewing figures, which can transfer to votes That’s what i meant
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drj
0 points
10
1
One of the millions of fans of European-based song contests around the world, not in Europe
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Post by drj on Nov 23, 2021 9:55:28 GMT 1
The way I see it, this jesc is wide open and we can actually consider many countries as potential winners! That is a prediction. I have made a different one. We will see who is right. If North Macedonia (who, I think, has the best song) can win, I will say you were right and I was wrong. I cede you 17 countries. But if Poland or Russia wins ... It is not just because “some” of the songs aren’t written by the singers that they are not deciding factors. In 2020, no one wrote their song. This year, maybe a few – Sara (Poland), Ayana (the Netherlands) and Arpine (“Malena Fox”) (Armenia) – had some input. The songs are mostly professionally-written, standard pop songs and there is nothing that stands out to make them a deciding factor. We are not getting the diversity and creativity that we got when the children wrote the songs. I offer all the winners 2003-2012 as evidence. We’ll never get songs like that from this system. There are advantages, in a JUNIOR Eurovision song contest, in listening to what the children have to tell us in their songs. Today, the deciding factors come from the singer, not the song. Social media (instagram) and youtube following is a big factor because, to get 16% and win, not 10% and come 2nd (2020), votes have to be concentrated. Stray votes at random do not accomplish that concentration: by the laws of probability, they tend to be diffuse. I agree with you that national broadcasters can “sell” a candidate in their respective countries: see Kazakhstan (2020) for an example. So I also agree with you that stray voters are less important than fans in deciding winners. All voters, stray or fans, of all ages, in politics and in contests, like to vote for a candidate with whom they identify in terms of age, language, gender and background, even more so among children, who do not care about songs or issues. The winner is not surprising. We are surprised because we do not study how they won. I was shocked when Valentina Tronel won in 2020: until I looked at her instagram account. I am not arguing that instagram=victory but I am arguing that there is always a reason and we need to look for the reason. Valentina had many reasons to be the ideal candidate in 2020. She had 300,000 instagram followers who could vote twice and defeat all other candidates. She could pick up votes in Italy and Malta (which follows Italian fashion) because she was half-Italian and Italy had no candidate. Even her given name is Italian not French (Valentine) and she had sung in Italian on Voice Kids. She was a superstar with Kids United which has followers around the world. Yet she mobilised French voters with nationalistic instagram posts (“Votez pour la France!”) and not one English word in her songs, few in her interviews. The Polish winners had been quite internationalist and Ala Tracz’s song had to be rewritten because the first version was almost all English. Yes, it’s true: I ignored the jury vote. Now I will tell you why. Jury votes usually go one of two ways. Either they follow the trend of the televote with a different ranking (2020, 2015) or the winner wins so big in the televote that they lose the jury vote and still win the contests (2018, 2019). Only in 2017 did the jury vote decide the winner and that was a mess: Russia lost the jury vote and the televote but still won the contest because of the margin of their losses. No candidate could win both the televote and the jury vote, so it was a loser’s contest and the majority of voters, on juries and in televote, did not get their favourite candidate elected. "Krylia" is one of my favourite songs, so musically 2017 was good but democratically it was a mess. We have no reason to believe that will happen in 2021 but let us hope it will not. Even in 2014, Italy and Bulgaria got the same number of votes from the juries, respectively, but Vincenzo won because he did a little better in the televote than Krisia, Hasan and Ibrahim, so the televote really made the winner.
Another hypothesis that needs testing: the last performer voting often wins. That helped Valentina too in 2020. I remember last performers winning going back to the early days of JESC.
So it is not an unfathomable process but it takes some study to understand and sweeping statements that anyone could win may not be helpful in helping people to understand the results or the need for change in the voting scheme.
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drj
0 points
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1
One of the millions of fans of European-based song contests around the world, not in Europe
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Post by drj on Nov 23, 2021 19:08:44 GMT 1
Also a lot more Junior Eurovision votes come from actual fans rather than casual viewers due to the limited broadcasts (I wish my country broadcasted it again ) that is where you're wrong, in JESC, just like in ESC, the fans doesn't represent anything at all, if the results were mostly from fans, in 2020, the online voting results would've been waaaay different, with probably a Spanish win in the online voting, and some countries that would've done better because they were appreciated by the fans (some example: Georgia or Poland), well, flopped in the actual results. With respect, I can't see where "the fans doesn't represent anything" comes from. I have shown above how the fans on instagram could have put Valentina Tronel over the top in JESC 2020. I also do not see why Spain would have won in 2020 if the results were mostly from fans. If all Valentina Tronel Instagram followers voted twice for her and 1 to 3 votes at random for other countries as they were required to do, she got 600,000 votes, beating Spain at number 2, with 471,000 votes and Poland at 284,000 and Georgia at 271,000 by more so. In fact, she got more votes than that because she had more kinds of fans, from Kids United, Italy and Malta, and, of course, France, plus stray votes who were not fans: a total of 723,000. So why exactly do these fans "not represent anything at all"?
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Post by shanfachai on Nov 30, 2021 12:02:31 GMT 1
I made a ranking of JESC 2021 based on 21 voters from YouTube + myself. Each voter was randomly assigned to a country (the last three voters voted as rest of the world) The voters : 1. ESC Rolly (Albania) 2. ESC Katarzyna (Armenia) 3. Lana ESC (Azerbaijan) 4. Misja Eurowizja (Bulgaria) 5. Eurovision with Jude Kennedy (France) 6. Kale Project (Georgia) 7. Say Eurovision! (Germany) 8. EurovisionFan97 (Ireland) 9. TumN ESC (Italy) 10. ESC Chris (Kazakhstan) 11. ESCedi (Malta) 12. EuroCelso Reactions (Netherlands) 13. Eurovision Tszai (North Macedonia) 14. ESC Clare (Poland) 15. ESC Latvia (Portugal) 16. MIAx (Russia) 17. Pani Angelina (Serbia) 18. Silly (Spain) 19. Harryvision (Ukraine) 20. Janro (ROTW) 21. ESC cranberry (ROTW) 22. shanfachai (ROTW) My Votes : Armenia Italy Ukraine Azerbaijan Spain Russia Ireland Georgia Portugal Poland The results : 1. Armenia (203) 2. North Macedonia (129) 3. Poland (118) 4. Russia (110) 5. Italy (107) 6. Azerbaijan (87) 7. Ukraine (71) 8. Georgia (68) 9. Spain (64) 10. France (64) 11. Albania (61) 12. Netherlands (60) 13. Portugal (31) 14. Germany (28) 15. Ireland (27) 16. Kazakhstan (17) 17. Bulgaria (13) 18. Malta (9) 19. Serbia (9) What do you think?
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