Australian singer Delta Goodrem has advanced to the Eurovision Song Contest grand final after days of online hype, fan campaigning and betting speculation surrounding her performance of Eclipse.

Each year in May, millions watch the contest, cheer for their favourite act, and complain about the voting.

But Eurovision voting today looks very different from what it did some 20 or 30 years ago. What was once a small television contest decided by expert juries has become a huge spectacle shaped by public voting, social media, diaspora communities and international tensions.

Eurovision is still about music, but the way people vote increasingly reflects the changing pattern in how Europeans view identity, solidarity and international conflicts.

From juries to digital ‘mass’ voting

When Eurovision began in 1956, viewers could not vote. Winners were decided by national juries.

This changed in the late 1990s with the introduction of televoting. Audiences could suddenly vote by phone for their favourite songs, turning Eurovision into a much more interactive event.

The introduction of televoting coincided with the groundbreaking 1998 victory of Dana International, an openly transgender singer from Israel. It gave LGBTQIA fan communities greater influence over the contest, helping shape it into the openly queer cultural phenomenon it is today.

Over time, voting became increasingly digital. Between 1998 and 2008, Eurovision relied almost entirely on public televoting, with juries used mainly as a back-up in case of........

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