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A Brand for Latvia

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Our preestablished ideas of any country is one of the results of a country’s branding. Attaching a label to a nation in order to make it easily recognizable and memorable can help a country make big steps in its development, making it a worthy investment. So where does the Eurovision Song Contest fit into this? The event itself is a chance for a country to engage in self-promotion. A country’s participation and ranking within the contest can bring many benefits, whether the nation’s brand is being strengthened, changed, or established. But depending on a country’s circumstances, the efforts for a nation to make their mark, especially in Europe, are nothing to scoff at. Latvia is no stranger to this predicament. Latvia shows a variety of different nation brand opportunities, which can be seen in its recent ESC performances, compared with their national identity and political context. This blog post will reexamine the elements featured in past blog posts and outline details which signa...
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No More Holding Back Onstage: Latvia gets loud

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Latvia’s history in the Eurovision Song Contest has been a rather uneventful one. As of the current year of 2019, Latvia currently holds only one victory in the ESC, and that’s in 2002, over a decade ago. Before 2015, the country’s presence in the contest had been viewed as bleak, with no chance of getting noticed. But with the performances in the two years of 2015 and 2016, Latvia suddenly took giant leaps forward, showcasing songs with intensity that caught almost everyone’s attention. While the Baltic country did not win in either of these years, Latvia’s presence in the competition no longer felt hopeless. The songs submitted showed proof that the country still had a voice to be heard, and that diversity is present within Latvia.               In 2015, the song submitted was “Love Injected” by Aminata Savadogo, or simply Aminata. She not only performed the song live at the finals that year, but the song was written...
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Two in One: Mixing national identities in Latvia

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National identity is a complex idea. Its definitions cannot be considered solid or finalized. On the surface, national identity is how a person identifies with their own nationality, and how the person feels like they belong to the country. (Triandafyllidou, 1998, p.595) This can be further fleshed out through multiple aspects, like culture, religion, and language. But how do things change once multiple identities are put into the picture? This leads to the deeper concept of national identity, which is how it generates a sense of uniqueness, and how it drives people of a country to strive towards setting themselves apart from others. This blog post will strive to connect this idea of national identity and uniqueness to the country of Latvia. As a former member of the Eastern Bloc of countries, Latvia has a complex national identity. Much of the country’s past has affected its position in the present. It would be accurate to describe the overall Latvian national identity as somethin...
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Latvia Three Minute Narrated Briefing

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Welcome to Three Minute Latvia!

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This blog focuses on the Eurovision song contest, specifically, on the country Latvia's participation in the contest. In Eurovision, each country performs for three minutes, hence the name Three Minute Latvia.  This blog is connected to a course called Three Minute Europe, which is linked here:  http://threeminuteeurope.blogspot.com   There you can see the blogs for the other countries made by my classmates.
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