‘Party for everybody’? Interrogating the shaping of sexual identities through the digital fan spaces of the Eurovision Song Contest J HALLIWELL PhD 2021 ‘Party for everybody’? Interrogating the shaping of sexual identities through the digital fan spaces of the Eurovision Song Contest JAMIE HALLIWELL A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Manchester Metropolitan University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Science and Engineering Manchester Metropolitan University 2021 ABSTRACT This research critically examines Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) fandom to explore how sexuality is shaped within digital fan spaces. Transformations in social media technologies have revolutionised ESC fan practices and what it means to be an ESC fan. I make a case for ESC fandom as a sprawling context through which its digital practices intersect with the performance of sexuality. This research uses a mixed- method approach, that involves experimenting with social media platforms as tools for conducting qualitative research. This includes developing and applying WhatsApp ‘group chats’ with ESC fans and an auto-netnography of my personal Twitter network of ESC fans. I contribute to the geographies of social media, fandom and sexuality in the following ways: I provide the first comprehensive analysis of the digital ecosystem of ESC fandom by mapping the online and offline fan spaces where ESC fandom is practiced. I argue that ESC fan spaces are fluid and dynamic and ESC fans travel between them. I then explore two social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, to understand how ESC fans express, make visible, and negotiate their fan and sexual identities within and across these digital fan spaces. I demonstrate how digital practices of ESC fandom augment the performance of sexuality in new creative ways. Through a critical analysis of socio-sexual digital codes (such as text, images, GIFs), through the lens of queer code/space, I explore how social media ESC fandom simultaneously breaks down and challenges the queerness of ESC fandom. I then proceed to examine the ways straight male ESC fans experience and practice ESC fandom. I develop the theorisation of ‘the closet’, to conceptualising the ‘ESC closet’, to understand how straight men ‘come out’, ‘stay in’ and negotiate their ESC fan and straight identities in online and offline socio- spatial contexts. I conclude by suggesting two ways through which we can use social media technologies and internet-enabled objects to deepen our knowledge regarding the expression of identity. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to my supervisors, Craig Young and Jon Binnie for all their advice, support and encouragement over the course of my studies. You’ve been fantastic, and I shall miss our regular meetings – especially ones where me and Jon are talking Eurovision and Craig has no idea what we are on about! I just hope we’ve made you more of a fan, Craig! Plus, thank you to Julian Holloway, Paul O’Hare, James Robinson, Steve Millington, Bex Alexis-Martin and Louise Platt for all your support. Thank you also to those who have reached out to me, both face-to-face and on Twitter, who’ve encouraged me to ‘keep on going’ when I’ve been down in the dumps, frustrated, and anxious with the writing process. I also want to extend a big thank you to Alex Hastie, Morag Rose and Sam Streit (nee Wilkinson) for all their support, encouragement, advice, guidance, and for being a listening ear when things have got tough. Organising the RGS Postgraduate Mid-term conference in 2019 was a challenge and big task, which has also been a big part of my PhD journey. So, a massive thanks to the MMU PhD’ers Gail, Maria, Fraser, Harry, Valerie and Matt for their help in co-organising the conference, we were bloody brilliant! Special thanks as well to those who also took their precious time out to deliver guest lectures, workshops and chair sessions. ‘Douze points’ goes to all the Eurovision fans who took part in this research, both face-to-face and virtually. Thank you for sharing your experiences with me and it’s been fun chatting about our favourite Eurovision songs. It won’t be long before we are all ‘coming together’ again to attend Eurovision and the events and concerts around it. Watching back old Eurovision’s through #EurovisionAgain on Twitter has been a total lifeline and escapism the last few months, and also educational – learning about the fashion styles of 1970s Eurovision’s, for instance! iii Eurovision has never been more important in these pandemic times and long may it continue! To Mufty, who I don’t think I could have coped without during this. You’re a fabulous friend and you’ve always been there at the end of the phone with any PhD or publishing questions, issues or worries I’ve had (sometimes over really trivial things!). Sending ‘Love unlimited’ to you and GJ, and I really, really hope I can get to Eurovision in Rotterdam in 2021 and see you and meet Luigi the cat! xx The ‘Cranks’: Sarah, Meg, Maria, Pat, Adam, Rob and Kate, you’re just beautiful and amazing friends and thank you always for making me smile and giggle. To the extended fam – Auntie Mandy, Uncle Ian, Melissa, Sam and Leo, Auntie Jill and Cousin Vincent for all your support, advice and encouragement. Lastly, to Mum and Dad. We’ve had lots of ups and downs recently and we will keep on pulling through. With lots of love xx iv CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................. ix LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................ x Chapter One: Introduction: ‘Good Evening Europe and let the Eurovision Song Contest begin!’ ............................................................................................... 1 1.1 Contextualising the study ...........................................................................1 1.2 Rising like a phoenix: coming out as LGBT through the ESC ..........................6 1.3 ‘Staring at the screens’: Using social media to practice ESC fandom ........... 10 1.4 Approaching geographies of social media, sexuality and fandom ............... 13 1.5 Structure of thesis .................................................................................... 17 Chapter Two: ‘Building bridges’ between the ESC, social media, fandom and digital sexuality .............................................................................................21 Overview of key arguments .................................................................................. 21 2.1 ESC, geopolitics, gender and sexuality....................................................... 23 2.1.1 Gender and sexual diversity within the ESC ............................................................ 27 2.1.2 Social media, the internet and ESC fandom ............................................................ 32 2.2 Towards geographies of digital fandom .................................................... 33 2.2.1 Fandom and subcultures ......................................................................................... 34 2.2.2 Geographies of fandom, popular culture and music .............................................. 35 2.3 Social media geographies, identity and visibility ....................................... 40 2.4 Digital geographies of sexuality ................................................................ 48 2.4.1 ‘The closet’ and shame ............................................................................................ 50 2.4.2 Smartphones, hook-up applications and sexuality ................................................. 53 2.4.3 Social media platforms and queer code/space ....................................................... 55 2.5 Chapter summary..................................................................................... 58 Chapter Three: ‘Making your mind up’: Using digital methods to investigate ESC fan spaces and negotiating an ‘aca-fan’ positionality .....................................61 3.1 Queering Netnographies .......................................................................... 63 v 3.2 The four netnographies ............................................................................ 68 3.3 Contextualising ESC fan spaces ................................................................. 74 3.4 Research methods.................................................................................... 79 3.4.1 Applying WhatsApp as a research method for critical qualitative data analysis .... 82 3.4.2 Auto-netnography or lurking? Participation observation of ESC fan tweets .......... 97 3.5 Digital Research ethics ........................................................................... 101 3.5.1 Ethical considerations for WhatsApp group chats ................................................ 101 3.5.2 Ethical considerations for critically analysing Twitter data ................................... 104 3.6 Data analysis .......................................................................................... 105 3.7 Negotiating fan and academic identities ................................................. 108 3.7.1 Developing fan friendships in and beyond the field ............................................. 116 3.8 Regulating the research/researcher closet .............................................. 120 3.8.1 ‘I’m not gay at all’: Interviewing heterosexual male ESC fans .............................. 125 3.9 Conclusion ............................................................................................