A Multimodal Social Semiotic Analysis of an African Vice President on Twitter

Abstract

Unlike presidents, who receive a lot of scholarly attention about their communication via social media, there is a paucity of literature on how vice presidents communicate through this platform. The present study employs Kress and Leeuwen’s (2006) social semiotic framework to analyze the representational meanings of images and captions to assess the ideologies and portrayal of power in the tweets of the vice president of Ghana, one of the countries on the African continent heralded for having an exemplary democracy (Sikanku, 2019 ). Findings indicate the portrayals of populism, imperialism, patriotism, and traditionalism in the multimodal discourse of the vice president. The study also assesses his strategic use of Twitter to build credibility and social capital.