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The theory of recognition has much to offer the field of political communication as it struggles to comprehend communicative dysfunctions, political polarization and governing crises across the industrialized democracies. Drawing on the work of Axel Honneth, Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser and Michele Lamont, as well as more recent contributions, we put recognition theory into conversation with some of our field's contemporary concerns. In particular, we show how the theory offers depth, nuance and synthesis to progress communication scholars are making in the study of how attention economics and social identity shape perceptions and communications in a hybrid political media system. In the process, we argue that we are experiencing a historically novel phase of recognition, in which the granting and denial of recognition are transformed at the individual level by the affordances of many-to-many social networking platforms, and at the group level by the use of recognition for attracting attention to commodified media properties. At the intersection of the modern attention economy, heightened articulation of identity-based messaging, and recognition processes is what we term a recognition crisis, in which claims of misrecognition by multiple, conflictual groups are unresolvable and undermine the solidarity that grounds social and political life. We conclude with a roadmap of new opportunities to understand existing research findings and pose new research questions. Moreover, we show that the field of political communication has a great deal to offer discussions of recognition occurring in related fields of the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A certain social-political geography recurs across European and North American societies: As post-industrialization and mechanization of agriculture have disrupted economies, rural and nonmetropolitan areas are aging and declining in population, leading to widening political and cultural gaps between metropolitan and rural communities. Yet political communication research tends to focus on national or cross-national levels, often emphasizing networked digital media and an implicitly global information order. We contend that geographic place still provides a powerful grounding for individuals' lifeworld experiences, identities, and orientations to political communications and politics. Focusing on the U.S. state of Wisconsin, and presenting data gathered in 2018, this study demonstrates significant, though often small, differences between geographic locations in terms of their patterns of media consumption, political talk, and anti-elite attitudes. Importantly, television news continues to play a major role in citizens' repertoires across locations, suggesting we must continue to pay attention to this broadcast medium. Residents of more metropolitan communities consume significantly more national and international news from prestige sources such as the New York Times, and their talk networks are more cleanly sorted by partisanship. Running against common stereotypes of news media use, residents of small towns and rural areas consume no more conservative media than other citizens, even without controlling for partisanship. Our theoretical model and empirical results call for further attention to the intersections of place and politics in understanding news consumption behaviors and the meanings citizens draw from media content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the democratic significance of citizen talk about politics, the field of communication has not considered how that talk is weathering stresses facing our civic culture. We examine political talk during an archetypal case of political contentiousness: the recall of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin in 2012. Pairing qualitative and quantitative methods, we show that a fracturing of civic culture took place in which many citizens found it impossible to continue political discussion. Individuals at fault lines of contention, by nature of occupation, geographic location, or other personal circumstance, were most prone to this breakdown. Our results call into question the ability of talk to bridge political and social differences in periods of polarization and fragmentation, with implications for democratic functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]