LAUSR

This article explores civic engagement with the Danish/Swedish crime series The Bridge (Danmarks Radio/Sveriges Television 2011–) based on qualitative interviews with 113 audience members, and drawing on the notion of cultural citizenship. The perspective of cultural citizenship, as understood and operationalized mainly by Hermes, is married with critical perspectives on the crime drama genre and its audiences, along with cultural analysis of the construction of and engagement with the cross-border region in which the drama is set. The analysis shows that civic engagement with the crime series is prompted through the construction of community and allegiances through which audiences feel connected. This argument unfolds in three main analytical sections, detailing how audiences’ articulations of community are focused around distinct yet overlapping dimensions of community as (1) a national social ritual, (2) a sense of Nordic community, and finally (3) community as regional identity and sense of belonging to a borderless Öresund utopia – the integrated region between Denmark and Sweden. In so doing, the article offers rich insights into how audiences shape civic identities as members of nation states, of historical and cultural regions and as border-crossers between these geo-cultural entities - in dialogue with popular culture and around the boundary-work of the different communities offered by such texts.