This article examines how African political and discursive forms shape the seemingly
universal practices of journalism at a state newspaper in Ghana. The daily work
routine, relationships with sources, criteria of newsworthiness, narrative
techniques - all are locally determined by Ghanaian standards of discourse and
sociality. Local aesthetics of representation and discursive propriety establish a
distinctive set of conventions for political speech and news writing. Through
aesthetically ‘Africanized’ discursive styles and techniques,
the state press constructs the authoritative social imaginary of the nation-state
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