Battleground

Battleground models Wisconsin''s contentious political communication ecology: the way that politics social life and communication intersect and create conditions of polarization and democratic decline. Drawing from 10 years of interviews news and social media content and state-wide surveys we combine qualitative and computational analysis with time-series and multi-level modeling to study this hybrid communication system an approach that yields unique insights about nationalization social structure conventional discourses and the lifeworld. We explore these concepts through case studies of immigration healthcare and economic development concluding that despite nationalization distinct state-level effects vary by issue as partisan actors exert their discursive power.