Breaking the code: Multi-level learning in the Eurovision Song Contest

Abstract Organizations learn from market, political and societal responses to their actions. While in some cases both the actions and responses take place in an open manner, in many others, some aspects may be hidden from external observers. The Eurovision Song Contest offers a mostly open-data case in which to study organizational level learning at the levels of organizers and participants. We present here evidence for changes in the rules of the Contest in response to undesired outcomes such as runaway winners. We also find strong evidence of participant learning in the characteristics of competing songs over the 70 years of the Contest. English has been adopted as the lingua franca of the competing songs and pop has become the standard genre. The number of words of lyrics has also grown in response to this collective learning. Remarkably, we find evidence that France, Italy, Portugal and Spain have chosen to ignore the ‘lesson’ that English lyrics increase winning probability, consistent with utility functions that award greater value to featuring national culture than to winning the Contest. These countries—but not Germany—appear to be less susceptible to Anglo-Saxon cultural influence than their peers, a resistance that may extend beyond cultural matters.