Campaign rallies and political meaning-making

Prior research determines whether politicians at rallies make programmatic, clientelist or personalist appeals. We argue that this reductive approach obscures the variety of meaning-making rallies. offer a vision as complex communicative events, which multiple actors co- and counter-produce messages in numerous ways. Nonetheless, we there are patterns Rallies produced accordance with genre guides what components included them how they interpreted. fashion foreground three constructs above others: candidates, collectivities contests. They them, among other things, through representative claims. Altogether, show significant sites political communication Africa worldwide.