Abstract
As social media democratize participation in the public sphere, new voices are emerging that challenge the status quo of public political discussion in important ways. In particular, social media are allowing ordinary citizens to offer their appraisals of government policy and their diagnoses of the problems besetting development. Through a rhetorical analysis of online videos by selected social commentators, we show how development is framed by today’s Ghanaian youth as an engagement with local and global vistas. Although lacking in nuanced historical and theoretical framing, and espousing an idealized-Western vision of development, our interlocutors play an important role in spurring active youth engagement in democratic discourse and in bringing to the popular stage contemporary national and global discourses surrounding development, identity, and the role of digital media in shaping modern public debate in democratic societies.
Keywords
Introduction
Ghana has since the 1990s embraced a neo-liberal economic development framework as part of its democratic dispensation. This has meant that media over the years have supported free speech aimed at providing commentary and critique on the country’s development aspirations. Traditionally, this role of the media has been played by print media, television, and radio. Over the past decade, however, social media and the Internet have become important sites for public discourse. Although traditional media houses have actively established their presence on these new media, a litany of new voices, detached from the controlling structures of civil society, have come to wield great influence over the shaping of this discourse. This has empowered ordinary citizens by providing the means and audience for opinion sharing and conversation (Kalyango and Adu-Kumi, 2012: 16), as is evident in recent online activist mobilizations like #DumsorMustStop (2015), #DropThatChamber (2019), and #FixTheCountryNoxw (2021). The #FixTheCountryNow campaign proved particularly controversial. A counter-hashtag, #FixYourself, emerged when a government official berated citizens by tweeting, “Gyimie [lit. “foolishness/stupidity”]! You don’t pay your taxes, you politicize every good policy. . . please fix yourself first!” (GhanaWeb, 2021).
The #FixYourself counter-protest angered many, and although the government distanced itself from it and the MP apologized for the tweet, it became widely perceived as the establishment position in the debate (Anonymous, 2021a; Krippahl, 2021). The tweet by the MP is however relevant for another reason – its confrontational rhetoric. In this paper, we argue that the MP’s usage of the term gyimie should not be seen as trivial. Rather, it taps into an emerging culture of online political discourse marked by incendiary speech. The effect of this on the public conception of Ghana’s development story is growing, with the catchphrases, buzzwords, aliases, and handles of notable online social critics increasingly serving as rhetorical markers in the national conversation.
Through a rhetorical analysis of selected videos produced as online livestreams, we assess the contribution made by two online social commentators to public political discourse in Ghana and assess how it relates to historical and contemporary narratives of developmentalism in Ghana. We also assess its relation to literature on the socio-political affordances of media as a medium of communication. The selected interlocutors, Kweku Chainz and Twene Jonas, are purposively selected because of the growing significance of their impact on the rhetorical sphere of ordinary political discourse in Ghana, offline and online. Along with other voices we briefly survey, they evince different styles – tirade, exposition, rebuke, and satire – but converge on one essential message: development in Ghana is slow because of foolishness. The paper forms part of a larger study examining the developmentalist themes present in contemporary online discourses. As such, the themes raised in this paper are discussed preliminarily and anticipate further elucidation. While the focus is on the Ghanaian context, the subject is globally relevant considering the recent surge in public concern over the polarizing tenor of political rhetoric on social media all over the world and the impact on freedom of speech, conflict resolution, and civil discourse, among others (Agency Report, 2017; Cheeseman et al., 2020; Kushin and Kitchener, 2009; Peterside, 2022; Solovev and Pröllochs, 2022).
Ghana’s development narrative and the media
The media (traditionally radio, television, and newspapers) hold an ambivalent place in the history of Ghana’s development. At some points in the country’s history, they have served as mouthpieces for the state, as in the latter stages of the Kwame Nkrumah administration, and at other times they have been channels for the expression of popular disappointment and frustration with the slow pace of economic growth (Hasty, 2006: 84; Hasty, 2008). In the 1980s, the government sought to eclipse the voice of opposition media through the Criminal Libel and Sedition Laws, which introduced ambiguity to the operational understanding of freedom of expression. The laws became an important tool in the hands of the regime to shield itself against opposition. After it was repealed in 2001, a massive proliferation of media outlets has ensued, with 604 FM radio stations (446 operational) and 145 television stations (102 operational) authorized as of September 2020 (National Communications Authority, 2020: 16, 18). But new Internet-based media have also become highly significant over the past decade, and social media are becoming an important source of news consumption (Sanny and Selormey, 2021: 3). Recent reports have placed Ghana 9th globally for time spent on social media (Ministry of Communications, 2019) and 10th in 2020 (Global Web Index, 2021: 3), while Golo et al. (2020: 51) have described the youth as living “onlife.”
While social media have been enthusiastically embraced as a site for political discourse by the masses, they have been more cautiously received by the political elite. Discussions on regulation, censorship, and surveillance are common (Adepoju, 2021). In 2016, the Inspector General of Police suggested a social media ban ahead of the presidential elections held that year, although the government rejected the suggestion (Clottey, 2016; Yeboah, 2016). Among the general populace, there is a widely held view that Ghanaians like to complain or “talk too much” (Anonymous, 2014, 2015; Doku, 2021). It feeds into a perception of the media as providing a platform for uninformed and unsophisticated political discourse (Van Gyampo, 2017: 134). Rather tellingly, a 2018 report found dwindling popular support for a free media, with 57% of Ghanains holding that the government should be able to prevent the publication of information it deems harmful (Endert, 2018). This is significant for a country frequently touted as a beacon of media and Internet freedom (Isbell and Appiah-Nyamekye, 2018: 1; Lartey, 2021). Much of this, the report finds, stems from a reaction to digital media as promoting unregulated defamation, cyber-bullying, and fake news (Isbell and Appiah-Nyamekye, 2018: 2, 7). But the blip was short-lived, and public trust in digital media has since rebounded (Sanny, 2021). It is within this upswell that we locate the increasing popularity of Twene Jonas and Kweku Chainz.
Talking development on social media
Glass Nkoaa: A western-secular vision of development
Twene Jonas is a Ghanaian domiciled in the United States of America. He runs a hugely popular YouTube account on which he streams live video content that has made him a household name in popular political discourse. Jonas was born in 1991 in Kumasi, Ghana. He is listed as “a US based Ghanaian movie producer, artiste manager, activist, and director” (Anonymous, 2021b). Jonas is famous for his strident and provocative critique of Ghana’s leaders. His brand of online activism is confrontational and temperamental, and he frequently insults Ghanaian political elites, including traditional authorities and the clergy, much to the displeasure of a large section of the Ghanaian public. His videos include titles like “All Ghana leaders are useless, aimless and lazy”; “Fool[s] always create problems for themselves”; “We are all aimless, lazy and we don’t think, then later blaming others”; “Ghana leaders are aimless”; and “Twene Jonas live from heaven on Earth.”
The message and rhetoric of Twene Jonas
Jonas constructs nationhood from the imagined ideal of visionary and selfless leadership, material progress, and political liberalism in America. America’s leaders are thinkers who understand how to run a nation. As he walks around New York (he calls this “warming up”) broadcasting live in the Twi language, he points to various aspects of the environment such as buildings, people at work, bins, fire hydrants, and vehicles, as evidences of a well-functioning system. America is developed because its leaders are intelligent and honest. Over there, the system is always working as it should, with sound thinking, careful planning, and intentional implementation of policy. The buildings are shiny–there is glass everywhere, hence his famous catchphrase, “glass nkoaa” (lit. “only glass”). Buildings are well laid out; buses are punctual; garbage is collected on time and disposed of properly; lakes are clear and unsilted; and ducks live free of the fear of being eaten by hungry citizens. There is clear evidence of thought and careful planning in “Obroni’s” 1 (lit. “the white person’s”) affairs. In contrast, Ghana is a picture of chaos. Public services are poor or non-existent, roads are bad, there is dust everywhere, floods regularly kill and destroy livelihoods, the cities are filthy. The country is like an untended, overgrown farm, “afuom mu hɔ.” This is because leaders are stupid and corrupt, and the latter is simply a manifestation of the former. The following text is translated from several of Jonas’ YouTube videos.
03:30: As for Ghana’s leaders, I am going to focus on them until they change. . . coronavirus is here so everyone stay at home. . . 10:00: NPP and NDC are friends. If you people allow the voters registration exercise and other stupid things to happen and you all get coronavirus, they will fly out and leave you. . . are they not even selling the airport? They are selling everything. In this country [America] everything belongs to the government. 16:50: [Jonas is walking onto the street] Look at these cars. . . quality cars. That Rav4 is from 2020. Look at me, I’m standing in the middle of the street. That car just passed me without complaint. In Ghana, the driver would have honked and insulted me. People here live too comfortably for that kind of behavior. . . It’s Heaven on Earth. See that V8 that just passed? It’s a taxi. 24/7 the system is working! God bless the white person (Jonas, 2020).
2
The following are from a 2-hour long “warm up” session.
The remark on the technicians working on the street can be taken as a reference to a widely held perception that Ghanaians are lazy and unreliable workers (Agyeman, 2015; c.f. Burchell, 2014; c.f. Lomotey, 2014; Van Staalduinen, 2019), a complaint Jonas often echoes. The American worker, for Jonas, does not make excuses: “they don’t even care if there are crocodiles in the water.” The Ghanaian, however, is liable to make excuses for neglecting their duties. Jonas is a harsh critic of religion, seeing it as a hindrance to development – how stupid to hope one day to walk on golden streets, when your gold is used by others to build cities of glass! Many of his videos comment on religious leaders and belief.
12:00 “Listen very well to me. Your stupidity is beyond imagination, beyond understanding. I’m the only one who will tell you that truth. . . I don’t attack individuals, I only attack politicians, influencers, and pastors who are deceiving and duping people. If you [pastors], were helping them materially while you duped them with religion it would have been more acceptable, yet they are poor. . .! Look, every minute there’s a public bus. . . the people can’t pay their bills and you are exploiting them. . . look here’s a bin and look there’s a man cleaning the street and lining another bin. The government has employed him to do that. . . the system is working forever. . . When I see how well the government does in this city, creating millions of Jobs, and then I look at what Akufo Addo, Bawumiah [Vice President], and his ministers are doing in that country, I get so angry. If they are stupid, how else am I supposed to say it? 1:10:00 A man, speaking Twi, calls out to Twene Jonas. He obviously recognizes the YouTube celebrity in the middle of a live broadcast.
Come over, let me show you how I’m parking my car.
See? Here’s a Ghanaian. Look at this man, he’s simply backing up into that space over there, and his car will be automatically lowered underground. He’s such a young man, look at him. You people get up and say white people are racist. Here is a Ghanaian chilling. Hello there! Are you Ghanaian?
Yes, I’m Ghanaian. I’m from Takoradi.
Since you came to this country, has the power gone off?
No.
Have you ever seen a prayer center?
Never. Do these people have time for prayer? These buildings contain only offices. Tell them! Keep doing your good work!
2:24:00: Listen to me, nobody loves you better than I do. I have come to the white person’s land, and I can tell you, they don’t know who Jesus is. What they know is work. So from this day forth, leave Satan out of it. If anyone is hindering you, it is Akufo Addo and his brother [Vice President] Bawumiah.
Jonas is aware of the aversion for his approach held by a section of his audience, but his own life experience compels him to be blunt: as he stated in one of his videos “I don’t care if they are your politicians or traditional leaders; anyone who deserves to be called a fool will be called a fool.”
Criticizing through comedy: Kweku Chaiz and the living legends
Over the past 3 years, Kweku Chainz (real name Appiah Danquah) has become a comedic sensation. Chainz is mainly active on Instagram (@kwekuchainzz), where he has 138K followers and 148 posts as of 23rd July 2021. The videos analyzed here are taken from this account (Chainz, 2021). His comedy offers social commentary on the fortunes and travails of Ghanaian life. He was born in 1995. Having been unable to complete junior high school, he worked as a second-hand clothes dealer in PZ in Adum, Kumasi. He joined social media through WhatsApp in 2015. As a second-hand clothes dealer, he sold trinkets – bracelets and necklaces, popularly called “chains” (GHPage TV, 2021). These had been popularized in large part by the boga (often spelled “burger”) lifestyle of migrants returning from Europe in the 1980s and 1990s (Nieswand, 2014: 404). 3 This earned him the nickname “Kweku Chains.” Kweku Chainz never trained or consciously learned to be a comedian and admits that he does not have a very complex analysis of Ghana’s challenges. According to him, he uses humor – an important feature of popular communication in Ghana – to challenge culturally ingrained poverty-promoting mindsets (GHPage TV, 2021).
Most of Kweku Chainz’s videos follow a very straightforward two-part format. The first part features one or a few scenes from an advanced country with the narrator – Chainz in his voiced character – praising the country’s technological ingenuity, infrastructural robustness, organization efficiency, foresight in planning, etc. The video then switches to a scene in Ghana (location not always provable) where a similar feat is being attempted in crude fashion and with poor results, the narrator berating or mocking the effort with sarcastic praise. Chainz never appears in his videos and always appears in interviews masked. He is recognized though his voiced character – a wheezy, sniffling, and frail-sounding impression of someone sick with a cold or flu. This impression in itself can be read as a commentary: a personification of the country’s sickly condition. Kweku Chainz thus blends ridicule, irony, satire, and farce to communicate his basic message: (1) that poverty is propagated through cultural philosophies; (2) that the cultural-philosophical normalization of poverty should be resisted; and (3) that genuine development requires a change in mindset. The following statements from his videos are translated from Twi.
“(Sniff) That’s right! Cars moving below, trains moving above. Look. At. This. No potholes! No bragia, no aboboyaa!”
4
The scene changes to a street in Ghana. “Jesus, here we are! The Legends! Strive for life, for that’s what matters [lit. Sunkwa, nkwa n’ehia]. Cows have taken over the road. Cows! Cows! Cows! How?! What kind of place is this? Full-grown cows. . . Who gathered us up and dumped us here? “Sniff. That’s right. This child is enjoying! Look at this! Oh Lord, what kind of place have you dumped us in? Look.At.This!” The scene changes to a rural setting, presumably in Ghana. A little child appearing no more than 3 years old struggles clumsily to pour water out of a large jerrycan into a bucket, presumably to take a bath. “Here we are, the legends! Chairman, pour water and let’s go take a bath! Right from your infancy, you begin your suffering. We live in a country where we are made to believe poverty is our culture. When you’re poor you think your poverty is normal. Just look at a little child struggling so much just for a bath. May God be your helper!” Chainz: “That’s right. People are not joking around. Early-stage practicals. . . by the time this child grows up he’ll be the best rider. . . it’s not by fluke, it’s not by favor. Look how they have set up his training course. Oh, Lord in Heaven, Jesus, he’s practicing at such at early stage! Look at this! How will you [presumably Ghanaian sportspeople] compete with him? These are the true future leaders!” The scene changes to a rural setting presumably in Ghana. Little children slide down a bare slope on the ground on crude, wooden make-believe-motorbike contraptions. “Dependable God! Here we are! Sunkwa! It’s happening! And people will give this a nice caption: ‘Happiness is free.’ Nonsense! You’ve obviously never been impaled in the anus by a twig. Kids are playing deadly games and you’re telling me it’s happiness? Look at this child. He’s going to get injured and be taken to the kitchen [for treatment].”
The note on “early-stage practicals” echos a common complaint that the educational system in Ghana is unhelpfully theoretical: in another video, Ghanaian children concern themselves with πr2-x (theory) while an Asian child flies a fire-extinguishing drone (practical). These videos highlight Chainz’ view of the West as developed, in contrast with Ghana as backward. Success is guaranteed only by hard work, careful planning, right education, and proper training, not by happenstance or divine favor. Sometimes, Chainz addresses specific issues in current affairs, such as in a video showing a cocoa processing plant in China where a machine splits cocoa pods at the end of a conveyor belt. It pans over to a cocoa farm in Ghana, where a group of men split cocoa pods with machetes. “Here we are! The legends! Old people are splitting the cocoa themselves! Cocoa is the backbone of Ghana yet look. . .” This video was published soon after a video reporting on the development of a cocoa processing plant in China surfaced in Ghana. The news was met with great alarm: why had Ghana, having long been a leading producer of cocoa, not developed technologies for even the most basic steps of the cocoa processing chain? These complaints are against the backdrop of perennial promises by various governments to “add value to our raw materials” to address Ghana’s trade deficit.
Another point that dominates Chainz’s diagnosis of Ghana’s development predicament is the idea of mediocrity as an element of socialization in early childhood. This theme comes up frequently in his repertoire. One video contrasts a child (~5 years) in the Western world driving a miniature bulldozer with a child in Ghana playing at make-believe driving in a broken-down vehicle with dangerously exposed metal parts. How will the latter ever outcompete the former as a roads engineer? Sometimes the reprimand is moral. One video shows a group of children (appearing ~3–8 years) twerking. Chainz’ commentary is “Just when you thought all these slay queens would fade out, boom. . . The generation emerging is worse than slay queens.” 5 In another, a little boy (~7–10 years) cheats in an examination. How will he not embezzle the Bank of Ghana’s funds when he becomes governor? He might even put the country up as collateral for a personal loan! Others dress and walk in imitation of American hip-hop culture. One scales a wall, apparently to escape school. Chainz’s verdict: “The future is bright!” By making fun of these scenarios, Chainz speaks to the socio-cultural consciousness of parents, educators, caregivers, and policymakers. For Chainz, poverty in this part of the world is often an inherited mindset, and his videos are a protest against that mindset. As he stated in an interview, “I am not just doing comedy, I am sending a message” (GHPage TV, 2021: 07:20, 08:11).
Other voices
Jonas and Chainz are only two of a burgeoning field of online commentators. A few notable others include, first, Avraham ben Moshe, leader of Common Sense Family (CSF). A hugely popular social critic, ben Moshe denounces religion as needless and even inimical to national development. For ben Moshe, religion is irrational, and reason must govern any modern nation. He sees politicians and religious leaders as the main culprits in Ghana’s underdevelopment. Religion and superstition, however mean that they escape censure while people blame supernatural causes. The West has advanced because it has abandoned religion in favor of reason and Africans would be wise to do the same. Commenting recently on a call by the Minister of Finance for the public to make monthly donations toward the construction of a National Cathedral, “Twene Jonas will definitely insult you. How we wish we could make our videos without insulting anyone. But how can we ignore such foolish things (lit. “nkwasiasεm”)?” Captain Smart, a popular radio talk show host, recently lost his job after political authorities allegedly complained he was too abrasive (Zurek, 2021). He then started a short-lived YouTube channel, SmartTV (slogan: “Fearless”), where he runs programs with titles like National Youth Forum. Smart focuses on issues of the economy and is especially critical of Ghana’s national debt, which stood at 70.2% of GDP as of March 2021 (Bank of Ghana, 2021: 7). Smart has described the Vice President – the government’s primary adviser on the economy, often touted as a genius economist – as daft, “w’abɔn” (Erns Media, 2021: 22:14). Prophet Kofi Oduro, a popular charismatic preacher, is famous for his use of the derogatory term “Gyimie” (lit. “foolishness/stupidity”) to describe behaviors of politicians. He is known for shouting this insult, with the last syllable stretched (“Gyimiiiii!”).
Public response and analysis
In the following section, we identify some of the themes arising in their rhetoric and offer a preliminary analysis of how they relate to existing discourses on new media and political discourse.
Development is linked with identity
Chainz, Jonas, and ben Moshe see poverty as an issue of identity. For Chainz, the average Ghanaian is socialized with a worldview based on contentment with one’s lot, and this is inimical to genuine development. His constant parody of the proverbial maxim “sunkwa,” meaning strive for life (lit. cry [su] for life [nkwa]), bears out his aversion for the principle that if one has life, everything else is fine or will sort itself out. Indeed, “sunkwa” is often spoken in the context of consoling someone who failed to achieve or obtain something of desire. “You still have life, that’s what’s important” is its basic force in such situations. Chainz’s sarcastic use of the maxim suggests that for him, the philosophy is used to excuse and condone a culture of mediocrity; it breeds a lack of ambitiousness and Ghanaians must break out of its philosophical hold on them, because “white people” are not sitting content with just having life.
An important comedic device Chainz employs is awe. Awe helps him accentuate the contrast between the thinking, industrious West – “Look.At.This!” – and the happy-go-lucky, let’s-just-wing-it attitude of Ghanaians – “Here we are!” Another key phrase is “Who discover Africa?” The question is rhetorical and sarcastic, intimating incredulity at the level of stupidity or backwardness being displayed. Chainz’s most famous line, however, is “The living legends!” or often just “the legends.” It is an appellative he uses sarcastically at the point of the scene switch from developed to Ghanaian context. Ghanaians are legends because who else could live so badly and yet so proudly? How could anyone survive under such conditions unless they were truly legendary? But the “legend” self-image is a self-delusion whose cultural anchors must be severed as material progress becomes synonymous with ideological rebirth. They are not legends; they are legendarily poor.
But identity also frames much of the public opposition to these social commentators. Jonas, in particular, has drawn strong emotional responses from Ghanaian society. There are those who will not stand mention of him, and those who cannot do without adulating him (GhanaWeb, 2021). Videos with titles along the lines of “X versus Twene Jonas” and “Twene Jonas replies X” abound on social media, as Jonas incessantly draws heat from public figures and celebrities (represented by X), heat he invariably returns in at least equal measure. Much of the emotional response stems from a sense of insulted indigenous pride. A video showing some elders of Bechem in Ashanti pouring libation in a shrine and intoning imprecations over the body of a slain sheep surfaced online after another vlogger made incendiary comments about the Ashanti king. The incanter declared the curses on behalf of the traditional council of Bechem, accusing an online critic of slandering the king and people of Bechem and Ashanti as a whole, and invoked the gods to not allow the YouTuber’s life to extend beyond the end of 2021 (Kotoka, 2021). Although the video was directed at another vlogger who had committed the same offence a year earlier, it achieved greater virality in the wake of Jonas’ comments and was widely attributed to him.
Ghanaians hold traditional rulers in exalted regard, and conversations on how to retain cultural heritage in the wake of modernization are perpetual. Jonas’ rhetoric flies in the face of this reverence and the indigenous spirituality that underwrites it. He and others renounce Christianity as imperialistic while simultaneously extolling Western materialism as a model of development, a model linked not only with the history of European imperialism, but also contemporary structures of exploitation. In this way, the discourse reflects continuity and discontinuity with Nkrumah’s modernist yet non-Western developmentalist outlook, an ambiguity that has characterized debates on developmentalism in Ghana throughout its history.
Kweku Chainz’s social commentary also enters the ongoing debate surrounding what developmentalist frameworks are suitable in postcolonial Africa as a whole. Chainz certainly ascribes to a scientific-technological paradigm that is essentially rooted in a Western, post-Enlightenment rationalist framework (see Chatterjee, 1986: 16–17). But his analysis transcends mere ascription to Western development models. His videos include positive scenes from Asia, the Middle east, and sometimes even Ghana itself. Still, the emphasis on skyscrapers, drones, fire-extinguishing robots, futuristic highways, among others, and the fact that some of the videos are sourced from animated models rather than actual places all point to the aspirational reach for a predominantly Western developmental imaginary.
Finally, Chainz espouses a humanistic-materialist ethos in which effort is prized over reliance on faith. Contrary to biblical wisdom, money and property are not to be despised: “[You say] ‘money can’t solve every problem.’ We hear you. [You say] ‘money is the root of all evil.’ We hear you on that too. But Chairman, given the current situation, I will gladly plant that evil tree in my house. I will use that root of evil to brew a tonic I can drink.”
The mocking tone is also present in Chainz’s reference to Ghana as the “Nyame bεkyerε Republic,” (lit. “the God-Will-Come-Through Republic”) and in his often-repeated question, “Who discover (sic) Africa?” “Nyame bεkyerε” is an Akan saying meaning “God will show.” It is often used in cases of dispute or difficulty to say that in time a person will be vindicated or rescued, by God. Chainz’ message is that Ghanaians must fix life for themselves because obviously, God is not rescuing the country. “Who discover Africa” is a sarcastic praise of the spectacle that is an impoverished life. Chainz’s activism is being translated into the sphere of public political organization through his founding of an informal group called the Ɛbεfa Movement. Ɛbεfa means “it will work.” Yet this is not a positive assertion of hope as might be inferred prima facie, but a satirical commentary on the idea that success will come without hard work and intelligence. Members of the movement protest that this saying, as well as others like “εbεyε yiye” (lit. “it will be well”), cast prosperity into the indeterminate future, thus breeding indolence and passivity. 6 Chainz sees his comedy as “inciting the youth against poverty, laziness, εbεfa, Nyame bεkyerε, and sunkwa. . . it might be funny, but it is dead serious” (GHPage TV, 2021: 07:20).
Balance and criticality
An outspoken member of Parliament, Kennedy Agyapong, recently criticized Jonas for failing to highlight the shortfalls that exist in America and the positive achievements in Ghana’s development story. “If he removes the insults and does a balanced comparison, I think he will be better received. . . the system is not perfect in the United States. Homeless people eat from bins there as well” (Rtv Ghana, 2021). For Bishop Salifu Amoako, a prominent charismatic/neo-Pentecostal preacher, Jonas is an impressionable young man yet to wake up to the lie behind the lure that is American life. Like Agyapong, he believes by omitting to mention the bad in America and the good in Ghana, Jonas presents an inauthentic narrative despite his good intentions. “Jonas, you only record Manhattan, you don’t record Bronx. If you see how filthy that place is, your jaw will drop.” He goes further to highlight the complicated history of slavery, colonialism, and the continued exploitation of Africa by the West as conspicuously missing from Jonas’ analysis. Further, he notes the history of gradualism that lies hidden in the outer veneer of rapid progress. “George Washington bridge is about 94 years old,” and “the bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn was built in 1876. . . maybe Jonas doesn’t know this. . .. It has taken them years. . . It will take Ghana time to develop to that level.” But he adds “the white men will not sit down for you to get to that level. . . they want to see a black man in serious poverty so we can keep borrowing from IMF.” These are only two of many voices challenging Jonas’ Glass nkoaa narrative.
We submit that the uncritically rosy presentation of the West potentially feeds into the desire of many of the youth to emigrate by any means possible to seek greener pastures abroad. Furthermore, the point about recognizing progress where it has been made should not be ignored. The fact that Ghana’s poverty rate declined from 47.4% in 1991 to 13.3% in 2016 should form a significant part of the development narrative, as should, of course, the fact that poverty reduction has stagnated since then (Ghana Statistical Service, 2019, cited in World Bank Group, 2019: 1).
Further, as Bishop Amoako observed, their analysis does not take into account the history and perpetuation of colonial and contemporary structures of exploitation and economic suppression. But it is hard to discern whether nuance is a desired aim for the vloggers. They have undoubtedly heard these criticisms of their work. They persist presumably because their approaches have proven effective in getting them heard. Praise and controversy alike tend to increase the consumption of their content, in much the same way as it does for television ratings. They also persist at least partly because their style sells, and this influence of the financial incentive for online broadcasting cannot be ignored.
Constructive as the admonition to hard work is, their rhetorical approach unfortunately rehashes longstanding Western tropes, such as the (in)famous assessment by the British colonial administrator Frederick Lugard, who described the African as “a happy, thriftless, excitable person, lacking in self-control, discipline, and foresight,” minded only about the present and unable to visualize the future, and loving power but not responsibility (Lugard, 1965: 69–70). It is not clear the extent to which our interlocutors have engaged with the racist legacy of such discourses as Lugard’s, or how their depictions mirror such conceptions. Our own analysis, however, did not detect any attempt to subvert or otherwise reconstruct such narratives. This leaves the troubling assessment that their critiques may be blind to the deeply problematic epistemological sources that nourish their developmentalist outlook.
The digital culture of online political discourse
Despite all the above, our interlocutors touch on important socio-cultural, religious, and political aspects of Ghana’s development story. Their no-nonsense attitude to corruption, poor work ethic, political mismanagement, and lack of ambition are important elements that should be engaged further in charting Ghana’s future development path in a collective and democratic manner. Beyond the discussions of the pros and cons of their activism, however, the simple reality of how digital media reshapes political discourse needs to be engaged. At the same time, we do not overstretch the novelty of the phenomenon. The use of insult in Ghanaian political discourse predates social media and has already posed a longstanding problem in media discourse. Indeed, its occurrence on radio still commands serious attention (Amoakohene et al., 2022). Ofori (2015) however downplays the threat of invective by highlighting the deep and innocuous rootage of insult in Ghanaian culture (e.g. Festivals, games, and inter-ethnic banter), which for him inures positively to the empowerment of ordinary citizens to challenge political authorities through their public discourse. He is echoed by Nii-Dortey and Nanbigne (2020). Digital media may thus be seen as remediating an existing cultural socio-linguistic practice. The extent of the interplay of these two factors is yet another theme requiring serious attention in scholarship.
But as an online phenomenon, the discourse can be read as a feature of emerging Ghanaian digital culture marked by the remediation of traditional forms of communication. In the first instance, Jonas, Chainz, ben Moshe, and Captain Smart all use the Twi language of the Akan people. The oral affordance of digital media thus allows them and their audiences to circumvent linguistic barriers imposed by traditional, elite media, extending the function of local language radio stations; the visual element allows interlocutors to provide evidence for their claims. For example, a Ghanaian celebrity filmed the inside of her house, challenging Jonas to do same if his living conditions were so good. Many have shared live videos threatening to have Jonas deported to answer to the traditional rulers. Others challenge the rosy picture he paints of life in America. Some are making a name for trying to track him down while livestreaming along the paths he usually broadcasts from. Jonas frequently responds, daring his detractors and reassuring his followers. This speaks to digitality’s ability to revitalize traditional materialities of orality within the frameworks of modernity, thus further challenging the notion of modernization as Westernization while animating, intensifying, and democratizing discourse. Further, the commentators surveyed show the local and transnational dimensions of online political discourse. While the online medium globalizes access and participation, its oral affordances limit participation by the non-Akan speaker, thus circumscribing a domain of identity that is non-geographic at the same time as it is culturally rooted. Though this could have implications for the future scrutability of Ghanaian political discourse and culture, which is heavily studied internationally, it may also harbor potential for the progressive linguistic decolonization of Ghana’s political terrain.
Of course, in the global context, these often highly impassioned video exchanges raise the issue of potential polarization (Bail, 2021; c.f. Boxell et al., 2017; Hougland, 2014), and there are signs of this in the Ghanaian discourse (Gadjanova et al., 2019).
Conclusion
In this study, we have attempted a preliminary investigation of key themes and issues emanating from the digital mediation of public political discourse in Ghana. First, we noted how democratized online political discourses extend the cultural embedding of political discourse in the wake of media liberalization policies. We also discussed how these discourses raise questions of identity in the Ghanaian experience of identity, an experience mediated both by a sense of the historical struggle for independence and the political and cultural adoption of Western, neoliberal socioeconomics as a paradigm of development. Related to this, we have highlighted the embedded interplay between elements of Western orientation and decolonization. Finally, we observed how the digital affordances of networking fosters growing conceptual intertextuality amongst online commentators and how they potentially contribute to political polarization, bearing in mind, however, that Ghanaian cultures have long utilized these forms of discourse in socially responsible ways.
More detailed analysis of these and other themes will be provided in subsequent entries to the series of which this is a part. What stands out in all this is an underlying theme of complication. Social media complicates theoretical conceptualizations of political discourse and culture by melding the old with the new, the foreign with the local. For better or worse, the terrain of public discourse has been fundamentally altered by social media and the Internet, and voices like the ones covered here appear to be here to stay. In his 2017 inaugural address, Ghana’s President asked Ghanaians to be citizens rather than spectators (Akufo-Addo, 2017). Social media is helping realize his dream through a discursively vibrant youthful populace, albeit, it would appear, on their own terms.
