This Element looks into how 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, it combines qualitative and computational analysis with time-series and multi-level modeling to study this hybrid communication system.

1. Introduction: Why Wisconsin?; 2. Communication ecologies, social structure, and lifeworld; 3. Studying the Wisconsin communication ecology; 4. Immigration: Complex issues and conservative asymmetries; 5. Healthcare: A national issue with lifeworld implications; 6. Foxconn and economic development in the local communication ecology; 7. Understanding communication ecologies in asymmetric media systems; 8. Conclusion; References.