Welcome to my website. I am John Acquaful, a PhD student in Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University, and this is the beginning of a space where I will share my research, teaching reflections, and thoughts on the evolving relationship between technology, communication, and society.
What My Research Is About
I study the digital public sphere — specifically, how ordinary people and social media influencers shape political information, identity, and participation online. My focus is primarily on Ghana and the broader African context, a region that is rapidly developing its own unique social media culture and political communication landscape.
My most recent project examines how influencers on Twitter/X became informal gatekeepers of political information during the #FixTheCountry movement in Ghana in 2021. When young Ghanaians took to the streets and to social media to demand accountability from their government, who controlled the narrative? Whose voices carried credibility, and why? These are the questions driving my research.
Why This Matters
The digital public sphere is not neutral. The way information flows, gets amplified, or gets suppressed on social media platforms has real consequences for democracy, for voting behavior, and for how citizens understand their relationship to power. Understanding these dynamics in African contexts is especially important because much of what we know about political communication online comes from Western, English-language environments.
Ghana offers a fascinating case study: a stable democracy, a vibrant civic culture, and a rapidly growing population of young, politically engaged social media users. There is much to learn — and I am excited to be doing this work.
What to Expect on This Blog
I plan to use this space to share: summaries of my research for a non-academic audience, reflections on graduate student life (especially as an international student), updates about my work on the Graduate Students Den podcast, and thoughts on the intersection of media, technology, and society.
Thank you for visiting. I hope you find something here that is useful, thought-provoking, or simply interesting.
— John Acquaful
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