Social Green Room bringing you closer to the participants

Over the years, social media has grown to become an almost integral part of European and global society, with people routinely updating their own profiles as well as viewing those of friends, family and celebrities. 

The Eurovision Song Contest has also become a hotbed for social media activity, you just have to look at our official channels to see how popular it has become! 

This year, host broadcaster, DR, wants to take this one step further by bringing you, the viewers, even closer to the action by creating a so-called Social Green Room. Here, every single Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and VK account of the participants and other essential parties have been included in one place so that you can easily follow how the artists are getting on. DR's mantra throughout the entire contest has been to bring you "closer to the artists", and this is exactly what they are doing with this project. 

The Social Green Room is already live and you can view it right here: greenroom.eurovision.tv

We spoke to Søren Bygbjerg from DR, who has been an imporant part of creating this project: "We want to invite the viewers inside and meet the participants", he said, emphasising the importance of being able to see the artists' own updates. "We also want to motivate the participants to use social media so DR have been helping by providing information to use social media actively". 

Tablet computers handed to the participants 

In order to help achieve full interaction with the virtual Green Room, DR are handing out tablet computers to many of the artists so that they can actively update their social media accounts during the live broadcasters, including from the physical Green Room in the arena. 

"We want to bring our particpants into the spotlight", said Søren Bygbjerg, "the social Green Room will be used a lot during the live shows so we hope the artists will get involved". 

The hosts will also actively be using social media, before and during the live shows, something that will also be seen on the Social Green Room. 

This concept was first pioneered during the Danish National Final, Dansk Melodi Grand Prix, back in March and DR's hope is that future host broadcasters of the Eurovision Song Contest will also want to use it. 

Remember to keep an eye on all of the artists' social media updates by visiting: greenroom.eurovision.tv.