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This study explores the role of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in creating and shaping European identity and belonging through an analysis of the affective bond television audiences have built with the largest and longest running pan-European media event. In reference to the ESC as an object of retained childhood media consumption, this bond is analyzed drawing on the notion of transitional objects in the work of object-relations theorist D.W. Winnicott and its adaptations in recent work on media consumption. The paper argues that ESC serves as space of both illusionary belonging, yet equally challenges the homogenous constructions of home and belonging prevalent in national identity through the disillusionment of a shared and negotiated cultural space, allowing for the formation of, borrowing Winnicott's term, a “good enough” Heimat that offers a dual space of belonging yet simultaneously challenges the horizon of expectation upon which such belonging rests

This article explores the interplay of political enthusiasm as a form of fandom and the creation and disappearance of trust as a result of the evolving relationship between fans and their objects of fandom. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with supporters of Barack Obama and the UK Liberal Democrats, the article illustrates how the bond between fans and their political fan object is built in the highly polysemic environment of convergence media in which audiences actively construct textual boundaries. Based on projective and self-reflective readings, enthusiasts of given political causes, actors or parties thus build an affective attachment to their fan object which allows for the creation of trust in its perceived proximity. If such readings become unsustainable over time, this affective bond and its associated levels of trust are eroded.

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