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Eurovision Song Contest Social Media Twitter

Eurovision generates six million tweets with Graham Norton, Russia and Australia driving conversation

By Jerry Daykin

May 24, 2015 | 3 min read

Early reports suggest last night's Eurovision Song Contest attracted around 6 million tweets from across Europe, and yes Australia.

The number is a modest increase on 2014's 5 million but is more impressive given this year's lack of stand out moments to drive conversation as Austria's bearded Conchita Wurst did in 2014.

The contest was won by Sweden's Måns Zelmerlöw, who had long since been the bookies favourite. His song Heroes had an upbeat and contemporary sound but it was the elegant staging that set it apart and ultimately helped secure the victory. Russia came in second place with a powerful ballad that led the voting for much of the evening, followed by Italy and an unexpectedly successful Belgium.

In honour of the contest's 60th year, longtime fans Australia were allowed to enter and came a respectable fifth, picking up a solid 10 points from the UK but sadly not repaying the favour - Electro Velvet finished 24th with five points. Germany & Austria came joint last on nil points, the latter being the worst performance by a host nation in living memory.

Analysis by Crimson Hexagon reveals that this year's conversations focussed more on the surroundings of the show than the acts themselves: fancy dress, food & drink, and scorecards were the biggest conversation starters, whilst UK commentator Graham Norton also made their list. UK viewers dominated the conversation with London alone representing a third of chatter, whilst despite airing at 6am down under Sydney was the second biggest, followed by Paris & Madrid.

Whilst Twitter represented over 70 per cent of the publicly visible noise (Facebook posts are typically private and harder to identify), 28 per cent of conversations took place on Tumblr where popular posts where shared as many as 40k times. Russia proved a popular talking point, with its attitude towards homosexuality something of a shadow over their entry, and of course humour played a big part too, not least as Europe tried to rationalise Australia's involvement.

Eurovision Song Contest Social Media Twitter

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