Various media allow people to build transnational networks, learn about the world and meet people from other cultures. In other words, media may allow one to cultivate a cosmopolitan capital. However, far from everyone is recognizing this potential. This study argues that cosmopolitan ‘readings’ of the contemporary media landscape should be understood in relation to cultural capital. Analyses from a national survey and in-depth interviews, conducted in Sweden, disclose a tendency among those in possession of cultural capital to recognize and exploit cosmopolitan capital in their media practices. Those in dispossession of cultural capital are significantly less prone to approach the media in this way. Relying on various media practices in order to exchange one capital for another exemplifies what Bourdieu called reconversion strategies. As social fields become more global, media offer opportunities for those occupying positions of relative (cultural) privilege to remain privileged – to change in order to conserve.