I think there's another variable the model can't really account for (and I'm surprised wasn't mentioned much in the article, though perhaps it was already covered previously). People actually do like some songs better than others.
I expect that what friendships actually do is strongly modulate this like/dislike for particular songs. Based on the kind of music favoured in Europe that would probably go a long way explain why Sweden did so well and Norway did so terribly.
In earlier articles the "quality" of the song was in fact accounted for - if a song did better in the semi finals than its position within the network of countries giving each other points by default warranted, it was considered to be a better song.
That said, while the predictions had Sweden on top, it also had Norway in third place. Obviously the effect of a song being good isn't as strong as this model thinks. The top three had two countries that have lots of friends, Russia and Serbia, that had not-too-terrible songs that therefore managed to scrape away points even from countries that aren't friends.
What I always find interesting was the differences between "the charts" and the results of the Eurovision Song Contest.
Like this time, we saw the "charty" songs somewhere in the middle while really strange stuff came up.
How does this happen? Do only people call there who do not like the chart stuff coming from the US or sounding like the usual mainstream? Or do maybe really less people like the music that is played on the radio?
For me, I don't call for any shows on TV. In this case I would have propably called for the russian babuszkas because they were funny. I don't like the stuff that german mainstream radios play here and most of the songs on the usual chartlists are crap in my eyes (or ears). So I can't really make up a solution by myself.
Obviously Eurovision is something of a subgenre which is more about its own "brand" of music rather than for established artists (otherwise we'd just send Robyn and win every year). If you see it as the Pride festival for music it makes a lot more sense. Feel free to vote this post UP-UP-UP-UP
Well, most west of Bryssel don't 'get' the EuroVison. I keep seeing it (using my kids as an excuse) but I usually don't like the music. So why is it so popular?
Maybe it's a cold war thing? We who lived at the border to the Iron curtain have a rather different view to the eastern europe than Uk. So to compete with them in a 'no big deal' contest is relaxing (no war this year). The voting is part of the game and could maybe be done in several other ways if one truly consider the outcome to be important, which is not.
To participate is the goal.
(as a side note, swedes always give the 8/10/12p to the song that in some way could have some connection to Sweden, this year the Cyprus contribution was written by two swedes I think)
I was thinking more longterm, since the televoting started swedes have a trend to vote for songs/artist that have a connection to Sweden and not for just being a song from a neighbour.
Even on the other side we try not to.