Nana 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 of Public Relations at the Department of Communication, University of Maryland, College Park. He has over a decade of experience in public relations, and his research revolves around the intersection of public relations, political rhetoric, and media. Specifically, Dr. Osei Fordjour investigates how politicians construct their public image in governance, crises, and elections. He also studies how the media frames politicians and phenomena such as crises to assess their broader implications.
Dr. Osei Fordjour has presented his work at conferences such as the International Communication Association (ICA), the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), National Communication Association (NCA), the Mid-Winter Conference, and Western States Communication Association (WSC) conferences. He has won top paper awards at the AEJMC, NCA, and the WSC Conventions.
Dr. Osei Fordjour’s work has appeared in journals like the Howard Journal of Communications, Visual Communication Quarterly, Social Media in Society, the International Journal of Communication, and the International Communication Research Journal. He is the current Teaching Chair of the Political Communication Division of the AEJMC Mass Communication and a Delegate-at-Large in the WSCA.
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 Osei FordjourSocial 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 Osei FordjourSocial 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.