Is a Prophet Not Appreciated in His Land? A Multimodal Interaction Analysis of Netizens’ Stance-Taking on the “African of the Year 2021” Conferral

Stance-taking has become a widespread phenomenon in social media discourses, and status conferral, an existing crucial media function. This study explores both concepts within the context of positive media status conferral and the audience’s stances in evaluating modern-day conferrals. These phenomena are investigated concurrently using Forbes Africa’s African of the Year 2021 conferral, related Twitter discourses, and multimodal interaction analysis. The findings reveal that social media news stance-taking differs from other contexts, expanding DuBois’ stance-taking triangle. In addition, multimodal stance-taking emerges as the central concept in the public discourse, leading to three other distinct contextualized themes, emphasizing the importance of context in the stance-taking process.