EUROVISION AS A POLITICAL INSTRUMENT OF MODERN CULTURAL DIPLOMACY

Abstract

The elaboration and implementation of political strategies plays a key role in modern statebuilding. In the early stages of the international relations’ evolution, political strategy was interpreted through the military force prism. However, over time, this approach has transformed into a complex system that combines economic and informational means of influence. Nowadays, the implication of cultural instruments, which allow the state to achieve strategic goals without using direct pressure, plays a special role in the implementation of the state’s foreign policy. The country’s participation in international cultural, educational, scientific, etc. events becomes a tool not only for intensifying interaction with the world community or increasing the recognition of the national brand, but also for strengthening its international positioning, broadcasting political or ideological messages, disseminating its national narratives, thereby increasing the effectiveness of the mechanisms for ensuring national interests and strategic goals at the global arena. For Ukraine’s political strategy, cultural diplomacy has acquired the characteristics of a critically important tool for countering aggression and mobilizing global support. The capability to reach a global audience as much as possible, to overcome the “filters of distrust and prejudice” inherent in almost any national event in another country, and the ability to broadcast both the national, state, and personal positions of the participants make Eurovision an effective tool of foreign policy and international communication. The study of using the Eurovision as a tool of “soft power” by a country suffering from external aggression or in need of an international platform for the wide dissemination of its own narratives is of high interest both in the context of implementing the state’s political strategy and from the point of view of international communication processes and international state branding.