A Royal Funeral at Manhyia, a Networked Pedagogy: Digital Mediation and Cultural Learning in Ghana

This study examines how the burial of the Asantehemaa, Nana Konadu Yiadom III, was mediated on X (formerly Twitter), transforming regalia, intertribal performances, and ritual gestures into communicative artifacts within networked publics. Using qualitative content analysis of 125 posts, reply threads, images, and videos, the study investigates how digitally circulated funeral performances became spaces of cultural interpretation, pedagogical exchange, and symbolic contestation. The findings show that regalia functioned as communicative performances through which sovereignty and historical memory were explained to wider audiences; intertribal performances circulated as mediated expressions of solidarity and cultural diplomacy; while ritual gestures generated competing interpretations marked by wonder, skepticism, spirituality, and critique. Explanatory posts, audience interactions, tensions and AI-assisted interpretations further transformed the funeral into a networked learning environment consistent with Africana Digital Pedagogy. The study integrates performance theory, mediation theory, and Africana Digital Pedagogy to explain how ritual meanings are enacted through embodied performance, transformed through digital circulation, and reproduced through public interpretation. The findings demonstrate that digitally mediated royal funerals serve as communicative spaces in which audiences, custodians, platforms, and algorithmic systems collectively shape cultural memory, identity, and Indigenous knowledge within contemporary media environments.