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.

Authors:
Ephraim Danquah, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Ephraim Danquah is a Masters student in Rhetorics ,Politics and Culture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.He investigate political and social praxis of Ghanaian people.

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