Böcker av Michael O. Johnston

Johnston explains how the media constructs the natural and bodily experience canoers and kayakers say they have while attending an annual floating event that occurs on the Mississippi River, contending that social meaning is essential for humans to make sense of their surroundings.

Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest 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.