Volunteering for the nation : Volunteering as a tool of nation branding during the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 in Ukraine

• Main Author: Holovko, Iryna
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Södertörns högskola, Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap 2018
• Subjects: volunteering; nation branding; media industry; media worker; free labour; motivation.; Cultural Studies; Kulturstudier
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-35646

There have been a lot of studies dedicated to investigating nation branding as a set of political discourses and practices deploying analysis of objects of symbolic nature: logotypes, brand books, slogans and commercials. The present thesis aims to study nation branding as a form of communicative labour through investigating volunteering as a form of media work that is used as a tool of the nation branding campaign in Ukraine during the Eurovision Song Contest in 2017. By using the theoretical concepts of nation branding, values and motivations of free labour in media industries, the thesis analyses the role of volunteers in the nation branding campaign during ESC 2017, volunteering as a specific form of media work and the motivation tools employed by the organisers and volunteers themselves to make sense of their involvement in the event. The analysis suggests that the roles assigned to volunteers as bearers of the nation brand are of great importance but the volunteers’ understanding of this process is rather confused and blurred. Another point highlighted in the thesis is how is volunteering was organised in terms of training and motivation on the side of organisers and what kind of motivations were of the crucial significance to volunteers themselves.