Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest (Lexington Books, 2022) explores an annual interstate tug-of-war between two small towns along the Mississippi River. In this book, Johnston examines how media shapes place and identity of people at this festival. In writing this book, he conducted analysis of a ten year period of media coverage, and found that the experience people have while attending Tug Fest is quite different than what is said in classic novels about life on the Mississippi River.

Michael O. Johnston is assistant professor of sociology at William Penn University and is a host for New Books in Sociology.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin).

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