Resumen de Fields of popular communication beyond the nation: a study of Eurovision Song Contest as product & as production
The ESC is an annual TV spectacle which has been produced as a cooperation of national broadcasters; and which has been transmitted live to considerable amount of audiences residing in numerous nation-states, continuously since 1956. The ESC is a unique TV program in regards with its temporal and spatial features. No other TV program, except for broadcasting of international sportive events such as Olympic Games, has had a long historical continuity like the ESC, while the ever-growing audience figures of ESC show lately consist of more than 100 million viewers from more than 60 countries.
In addition to these quantitative extremes of ESC, there are significant socio-cultural aspects of the phenomenon that motivated this study. ESC constitutes to one of the initial attempts to promote a pan-European platform in the audio-visual sphere, and thus, it historically has triggered sorts of discussions centered around the discourse of "Europeannes". In other words, ESC has been a discursive tool in the definitions of "Europeanness" and political strategies of "Europeanization". In this thesis work the ESC, as a tele-visual product, is reintroduced in the social relations which have sustained it throughout its more than a half-century long existence, in order to be scientifically studied and fully understood. Based on the Cultural Field Theory of Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Production perspective, the ESC is explored as a cultural production field, and studied in the broader context of transnational communication. Thus ESC is conceptualized as a "collection of various fields of cultural production, which functions as a trans- national exchange and display arena". In order to provide with an analytical framework for studying the field of the ESC, 4 key points that reveal its nature are proposed:
1) The ESC is a cultural product sustained by a particular international field "a structured space of positions which can be occupied by agents or organizations" (the EBU and national broadcasters), and in which the position of any agent or organization depends on the type and quantity of resources or capital they have at disposal". 2) The national fields of cultural production (national fields of the ESC) are equally important for understanding the international ESC field, both from production, distribution and reception sides.
3) Both of these fields (international ESC field and national fields of cultural production) are interrelated with other fields such as economic and political fields, and have been influenced by them.
4) "Objective structures" of these two fields, and the "subjective experiences of the agents and organizations occupying positions in these fields" must be taken into consideration at the same time Based on this framework, the totality of the field of the ESC as well is its interrelations with relevant fields around it, are taken into consideration. This included on one hand, a focus on the producers (as agents and organizations: singers, presenters, broadcasting institutions, EBU) and fans, which are the essential positions that are occupied within the field of ESC, whose combined effort sustains the ESC as it is. On the other hand the product itself is studied internally: the characteristics of the final cultural product (the ESC program), itself. Following Pierre Bourdieu's analytical approach that begins with the analysis of the visible aspects of a social phenomenon and proceeds to the study of its less visible or invisible aspects, the analysis of the genre characteristics and textual features of the ESC tele-visual product - the ESC program are used as an entrance point to its research object, the ESC.
As an enduring television program of 55 years, the ESC inhabits essential features of television narration, which are succession, repetition and series forms.
Different segments of the ESC program (opening, performances, interval act, voting and closing segments) are presented as a succession, while each of these segments exhibit their internal narratives and as a whole constitute to the annual ESC program. The repetition is used in two manners: as the short term where performances or vote presentations are more or less the same units with different actors and actions, and as the long term where more or less the same format of the program is repeated from year to year. Therefore, the ESC can be defined as a yearly television series. Displaying the essential characteristics of two television genres, the variety show and media event, the ESC program on one hand is composed as a family television product, which has diverse components (performances, interval acts etc.) to attract maximum number of viewers. On the other hand, as a media event of contest type, the ESC program provides with its audiences a "rule-governed battle of even competitors", with the underlying message of "who will win this year?" The major temporal characteristic of the ESC is that of simultaneity or liveness, which on one hand demands a very tight time organization on the part of the producers, and on the other hand enforces the community creation function of the ESC program among the audiences dispersed in a vast geographical zone. The liveness of the ESC is further enhanced when the excessive spatial reach of the ESC is emphasized via synchronized vote collection from diverse countries and cities. Therefore one aspect of the spatial characteristic of the ESC is international dispersal, where the center of the show is simultaneously in coordination and in touch with numerous centers, capitals.
The sense of intimacy and liveness is boosted for the totality of the program as the focus of attention move from one country to the other in the real time, especially while receiving the votes.
Although the ESC has reached its audiences and gained its diverse social meanings first and foremost as a television program, like any other symbolic form or cultural product, the ESC television program came into existence and persisted until today thanks to diverse factors and dynamics; agents and organizations. Thus in the second part of this study, the focus is switched from the product itself, to its production environment and invisible aspects of the ESC are investigated via the study of its production field on international and national levels. On the international production level, ESC has been an outcome of cooperation mainly among television broadcasters from different countries from Europe and beyond, with different and possibly, conflicting interests. Both cooperation-interdependency and conflict-competition has been inherent in the way the broadcasters have related to each other in the international field of ESC's production, where the resources-capitals are not evenly distributed among the agents in the field. Thanks to this, the texture of the ESC phenomena since its origin has been characterized with a tension between competition-battle-rivalry versus cooperation-festival-friendship, among participant countries, including musicians, participant broadcasters, and publics.
On the national level, multi-layered relations of cooperation, interdependency, competition and conflict between the actors in the domestic field of ESC¿s production; and interrelations between this field and other fields such as political field and international field of ESC, have sustained the ESC as it is in a given national field. Hence, each participant country's way of relating to ESC has been different depending on the meaning of the ESC in their social imaginaries, which is the result of the combined effort of the agents in national field, including the ones from participating broadcasters, music-entertainment sector, and the media.
Study of the Turkish case has to proven that the ESC has occupied a rather special place in Turkish social imaginary in regards with country's socio-cultural relationship with "Europe". In the ephemeral communicative spaces formed around yearly ESC competitions and the national competitions, ESC-related issues have been framed and re-framed by the agents in the ESC¿s national production field, where two dominant concerns have formed the contours of imaginations about the ESC: receiving good results (preferably a victory) and representing Turkey decently, in the international ESC platform. For a country, which has internalized the affective quest for being a part of in general "Western", and in particular "European" imagined community, the ESC has been perceived as a perfect platform where Turkey's "Europeanness" can be performed, and Europe¿s approval of this performance can be sought.
Therefore imaginations where ESC is perceived as a difference-battle- competition-rivalry have been more dominant than the ones where ESC is seen as sameness-festival-cooperation-friendship, in Turkish context. However, both for the publics who love the ESC, and the ones who dislike it, the relationship with the ESC image has always been an affectionate one. Study of the ESC product and international-national fields of ESC's production has let us conclude that the ESC has been an image-based symbolic form made available by transnational media flows; has triggered multiple and diverse imaginations; has enabled imagined communities of audiences both at national and transnational levels; and has fed social imaginaries of different sorts (national, transnational, European). Findings of this study about the ESC can be generalized to most of the transnational communication spaces which emerge around visually and narratively-staged image-based products and events. Since such products and events are framed by the media and reach to publics via media framing, rather than direct experiences, these communicative spaces are full of conflicts shaped by multiplicity of imaginations, which are framed both by perceptions originating from particular local and national contexts. Furthermore these transnational communication spaces have an ephemeral, fragmentary and unstable nature, thanks to the dominance of national and local communication spaces. Besides, these spaces inhibit a universal and a particularistic dimension, which pushes the tendencies of "sameness" and "difference" at the same, thanks to the supranational and national dynamics and factors. Finally, affections play a significant role in this sort of communicative processes, most of time much more than the ration, thanks to the image-based origin of the space, which are media products and events.
