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.

在欧洲和北美社会中，出现了一定的社会政治地理分布：由于后工业化和农业机械化扰乱了经济，农村和非大都市地区的人口老化和减少，导致大都市和农村社区之间的政治和文化鸿沟不断扩大。然而，政治传播研究往往集中在国家或跨国层面，通常强调网络数字媒体和隐含的全球信息秩序。我们认为，地理位置仍然为个人的生活世界体验，身份以及政治传播和政治方向提供了强有力的基础。这项研究着眼于美国威斯康星州，并展示了2018年收集的数据，该研究证明了有意义的（尽管通常很小），就媒体消费方式，政治话题和反精英态度而言，地理位置之间的差异。重要的是，电视新闻继续在各地的公民节目中扮演重要角色，这表明我们必须继续关注这一广播媒体。更多大都市社区的居民从声望较高的来源（如纽约时报（New York Times）以及他们的谈话网络按党派关系进行了清晰分类。与新闻媒体使用的普遍刻板印象相反，即使没有控制党派关系，小城镇和农村地区的居民也不会比其他公民消耗更多的保守媒体。我们的理论模型和实证结果要求在理解新闻消费行为和公民从媒体内容中汲取的含义时，进一步关注场所和政治的交集。