This article explores how nine Swedish cultural editors and managers in mainstream media institutions define cultural journalism and its political dimensions during times of increased digitization and media convergence. Swedish cultural journalism is aesthetic and political critique applied to subject areas (music, literature, etc.) and contemporary societal and ethical issues. Drawing on Zelizer we ask whether there is a common interpretive community of cultural journalists in different media regarding: (1) how they define their scope, (2) how they understand "the political" in cultural journalism and its implications for democracy, and (3) how they view media convergence and digitalization. We find that although editors/managers from different media share a basic understanding of cultural journalism as an alternative perspective to news, "the political" in cultural journalism is approached differently in the press and the public service broadcast media. Furthermore, due in part to structural conditions, they also see the effects of digitization differently, forming sub-communities on two counts. This study thus contributes new knowledge to a field previously focused almost exclusively on newspapers.

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This article examines the media event as relocated to public viewing areas (PVAs) erected in cities across the globe, where people gather to watch the events together live on-screen. The study is based on ethnographic research carried out in PVAs located in selected cities during the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 2012 Summer Olympics. We examine the relationships between these events, as reconstituted in these different locations through media networks, and the public’s participation via the event on-screen. The PVA emerges as a new location of experience and participation, with its own histories as a place of attraction for the local public and for visitors from afar, in what D. Massey would describe as an ‘intersection of local and global social relations’. The host city arena is no longer the self-evident ‘centre’ for this event, which has been pluralized through the complex web of media structures and the activities of participants who come to experience the event in these other, dispersed locations.