Représenter l’Europe dans un divertissement télévisuel. Entre marque et programme : la mise en scène des frontières au Concours eurovision de la chanson 2023

Abstract

The Eurovision Song Contest is organized annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). This article aims to analyze the changes made to the stage design in the specific context of the 2023 edition, organized by the BBC on behalf of the Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne, due to the war in Ukraine. This particular configuration highlights the porosity between the EBU's corporate discourse on union and the entertainment program that symbolically creates competition between nations. The approach combines media strategies and television programs studies based on the work of François Jost and Jean-Claude Soulages in the field of information and communication sciences. The transfer of an institutional decision into entertainment is analyzed through the relationships between genres, enunciation, tones, and strategic uses of eight excerpts taken from the three shows that make up the 2023 edition of the contest. The article explores this question through the metaphor of the border. Its various visual and discursive manifestations deepen the meaning of unity in a strategy to reinforce the EBU's message in a sensitive context. The article thus provides further reflection on the discursive saturation of unity, expressed in a variety of content and conveyed through a polyphonic discourse. It therefore examines how entertainment negotiates external events to consolidate its functioning, its own language, and the promotion of the EBU as a media player.

Keywords: Apparatus, Border, Corporate Discourse, Entertainment, Europe, Eurovision