Abstract
Ghana was shaken when Afua Asantewaa Aduonum attempted to break the Guinness world record for the longest singing marathon by an individual dubbed the “sing-a-thon”. Drawing inspiration from Hilda Bassey in Nigeria who broke the world record for the longest cooking marathon by an individual dubbed “cook-a-thon” which lasted only for a while. Ghanaian social mediaspace sprang into a spiral of a ripple effect to hold the record-breaking event as it draws others to do the unimaginable to attain break a world record. In this essay, I seek to understand how attempters of the Guinness world record in Ghana are performing micro-celebrity practices by deploying Kairos and modes of credibility through Guinness world-breaking events to advance their agenda of attaining a microcelebrity status. I argue these world-breaking events aid in manufacturing creative practices and modes for attaining micro-celebrity status in Ghana. I address these questions; In what ways does the practice of breaking world records enact micro-celebrityness? how do the Kairos and modes influence the making of micro-celebrities in Ghana? I focus on how Guinness World Record events held in Ghana produce microcelebrities through mediatization. Using rhetorical analysis, I employ Afua Asantewaa’s Aduonum sing-a-thon (longest singing marathon by an individual) as a case study. I conduct a microscopic analysis of her discourse from her TikTok account leading to the Guinness world-breaking event. This paper contributes to existing research on microcelebrity production and labor, especially in the Ghanaian context, and provides a nuance to understanding microcelebrity practices and their participatory nature.
Author Information
Ephraim Danquah, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States
Paper Information
Conference: MediAsia2024
Stream: Mass Communication
This paper is part of the MediAsia2024 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Danquah E. (2024) Performing Microcelebrity: Analysing Kairos, Modes, and Practices in the Era of Breaking of World Record in Ghana ISSN: 2186-5906 – The Asian Conference on Media, Communication & Film 2024: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 221-234) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5906.2024.19
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5906.2024.19
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