Europe makes its mind up – compatibility of countries in the Eurovision Song Contest

17 May 2005

The Eurovision Song Contest demonstrates that the United Kingdom is remarkably compatible with the rest of Europe, despite what its citizens might think. This is the finding of a team of researchers from the University of Oxford who have conducted a complex network analysis of Eurovision voting data to investigate the relationships between countries in the contest.

The Eurovision Song Contest celebrates its 50th anniversary this weekend, and love or hate it, the quantity of countries competing and the huge number of television viewers across the globe suggest it is one of the world’s few truly international events. The team of Oxford researchers chose the contest as a phenomenon that could be measured in order to examine how compatible the various European countries are. Using a framework of complex networks the researchers analysed voting behaviour in the contest over a period from 1992 to 2003. The results from this analysis were compared against results from a simulated ‘random contest’, in which all the songs are assumed to be of equal quality and each country assigns its points randomly among the remaining countries. The results prove that voting patterns do exist in the Eurovision Song Contest, and that while many of these patterns confirm viewers’ suspicions, others are rather more surprising.

Many Eurovision viewers believe there are a several ‘cliques’ in the contest in which a number of countries all vote in a similar way. The results show this to be true, with Greece and Cyprus showing the strongest correlation by assigning very similar numbers of points to each of the other countries. The team also identified a cluster of Nordic countries: Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Estonia, which have a high level of correlation in voting behaviour. Other clusters included Bosnia and Turkey, Croatia and Malta, the UK and Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands, and France and Portugal.

Further analysis of voting patterns between countries allowed the researchers to identify several countries that appear to be more ‘in tune’ with the rest of Europe, that is, countries that are compatible with a greater number of countries than others. Compatibility between countries was measured by analysing how often a given country exchanged points with another country. If this number exceeded that expected for a ‘random contest’, the countries were judged to be compatible. The country that was found to be compatible with the greatest number of other countries was the UK, whilst at the opposite end of the spectrum France, and to a lesser degree, Spain, were found to be the least compatible with the rest of Europe.

Professor Neil Johnson conducted the research with colleagues in Oxford’s Department of Physics. ‘Despite the British tendency to feel distant from Europe, our analysis shows that the UK is actually remarkably compatible, or ‘in tune’, with other European countries,’ he said. ‘Equally surprising is our finding that some other core countries, most notably France, are significantly ‘out of tune’ with the rest of Europe.’

‘Although this study is limited to the data emerging from the Eurovision Song Contest, we believe the complexity we have observed amongst competing countries could be representative of many real-world situations in which groups of individuals, societies, political groups or even governments establish their own inter-relationships and hence ultimately decide their own fate.’

For more information contact the Press Office on 01865 280528 or email press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

• ‘How does Europe Make Its Mind Up? Connections, cliques, and compatibility between countries in the Eurovision Song Contest’ by Daniel Fenn, Omer Suleman, Janet Efstathiou and Neil F Johnson has been accepted for publication by the journal Physica A and is available online at: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0505071
• 39 countries will be participating this week in the semi-final and final of the 50th Eurovision Song Contest. For more information see: http://www.eurovision.tv/english/index.htm
• Professor Neil Johnson’s research group focuses on complex systems in both man-made and natural situations. Previous research has included analysis of the financial markets as a complex system and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the congestion charge in the London transport network.
• Professor Johnson’s research group are part of Oxford University’s inter-disciplinary research initiative CABDYN (Complex Adaptive Dynamical Networks). For more information see: http://sbs-xnet.sbs.ox.ac.uk/complexity/