Journalists, Narratives of European Enlargement, and the Man-on-the-Sofa

Abstract

Against the backdrop of EU enlargement, the article is concerned with the possible interconnections between ‘mediated worldliness’ and ‘banal’ or everyday cosmopolitanism. Based on field work at Swedish Television, focus group interviews and an analysis of news reporting in the period leading up to enlargement, it asks what can be learned about the work of the cosmopolitan imagination by exploring the relation between journalists, narratives of enlargement and the perceptions of Swedes from various walks of life.