Nana Kwame Osei Fordjour
Assistant Professor, Communication
Education
Ph.D., Communication, University of New Mexico
M.A., Communication Studies, University of Ghana, Legon
Research Expertise
Crisis & Risk Communication
Media Studies
Political Communication
Public Relations
Dr. Nana Kwame Osei Fordjour is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Maryland, College Park. His research revolves around political public relations, crisis, and media studies. Dr. Osei Fordjour investigates politicians’ strategic messaging from perspectives like image construction, impression management, and authenticity. He studies contexts such as governance and elections. Dr. Osei Fordjour also studies various mediated and crisis communication forms to assess their broader implications.
He has presented his work at conferences such as the International Communication Association (ICA), the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), the National Communication Association (NCA), and the Easter and Western States Communication conferences (ECA and WSCA). Dr. Osei Fordjour’s research has been recognized with top paper awards at the AEJMC, NCA, ECA, and WSC Conventions.
Dr. Osei Fordjour's work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Public Relations Research, the International Journal of Strategic Communication, the Howard Journal of Communications, Visual Communication Quarterly, Social Media in Society, the International Journal of Communication, the International Communication Research Journal, Newspaper Research Journal, and others.
He is the current Junior Vice Chair of the AEJMC Political Communication Division and has previously served as the Teaching Competition Chair of the same division. He has held positions like Delegate-at-Large at the WSCA. In addition, Dr. Osei Fordjour has over a decade of industry experience in public relations. He uses qualitative, critical, and mixed-method approaches and enjoys collaborative research and mentorship.
Publications
Social Media, Personalization, Visuals, and Strategic Political Communication: The Case of an African Vice President’s Image-Construction on Twitter
Using a multimodal rhetorical approach, this study analyzes the tweets of Ghanaian Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in his first year after the 2020 election and to understand how he constructs his public image through personalization.
Author/Lead: Nana Kwame Os…Social media platforms have heightened the demand for identity-based politics, in which the public expects politicians to display personal aspects of their lives toward strategic ends. Using a multimodal rhetorical approach, this study analyzes the tweets of Ghanaian Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in his first year after the 2020 election and to understand how he constructs his public image through personalization. Results indicated that he displayed his religious beliefs, strong relationship with his wife, personalized visual graphics, and patriotic participatory acts. The study argues that Bawumia’s identity and Ghana’s cultural context manifest in his personalization on Twitter. The image he constructs and the broader implication of this present study for strategic communication are discussed.
Personalization as a Strategic Political Tool on Social Media: The Curious Case of VP Kamala Harris on Twitter
Social media have reinvigorated the shift of focus from a party-centered politics to a personality-based one.
Author/Lead: Nana Kwame Os…Social media have reinvigorated the shift of focus from a party-centered politics to a personality-based one. This has made how politicians personalize on social media, especially in government, consequential for them and their administration. Vice presidents across the globe, especially in the United States, play crucial constitutional roles central to the country’s political discourse. Though they are ignored in the extant literature, their rhetoric has ramifications for contemporary democracy. Using a multimodal rhetorical approach, I analyze Vice President Kamala Harris’s tweets (n = 357) in her first year of office to understand how she constructs her public image through personalization. Results indicated that she displayed strong family bonds, reflected on her education and its influence, her historical accomplishments, as well as her emotional moments. I discuss the implications of the image she constructs in this present study.