Barack Obama Plaza: Ireland’s Gas Station Tribute to the 44th President

Learn about the gas station that doubles as a museum to the 44th president of the United States.

Land of a thousand welcomes. O’Dea. CC BY-SA 4.0.

On the M7 motorway between Dublin and Limerick, Ireland, a tired and hungry traveler can find just the service station they need. It provides a gas station, fast food outlets, and a convenience store. If the traveler has a little time to spare, they can head upstairs to the museum dedicated to Barack Obama, the United States’ 44th president. 

It’s a surreal mix of a service station and a presidential memorial. Signs with Obama’s name adorn everything from the floor mats to trash cans to cups of tea. Cardboard cutouts of the former U.S. president and first lady greet every entrant. Upstairs, display cases proudly show off memorabilia from Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and his visit to the nearby village of Moneygall. 

Obama fever swept Ireland when an Irish genealogist discovered that Obama’s great-great-great-grandfather, Fulmoth Kearney, emigrated from Moneygall to a farm in rural Ohio in 1850. The discovery added yet another twist to Obama’s multifaceted heritage and led to a 2011 visit by the president. 

Moneygall adorned its streets with Irish and American flags to welcome the presidential motorcade. Locals lined the streets to welcome the president and first lady as they met Obama’s eighth cousin Henry, whom the president dubbed “Henry the Eighth.” Most famously, they stopped by Ollie Hayes’ Pub to drink a pint of Guinness. “We feel very much at home here,” Obama said. “I feel even more at home after that pint that I just had.”

What’s the craic, Barack? Charles McCain. CC0.

As a nation defined by diaspora, Ireland welcomes prominent figures from across the world into its fold. The Great Potato Famine of 1845 forced millions to flee Ireland penniless and starving, beginning a long pattern of emigration in search of a better life. Over the course of the next century, Irish migrants spread across the world. Though Ireland’s population numbers only 5 million, 80 million people worldwide can claim Irish ancestry.

So when Barack Obama discovered his Irish roots, the nation feverishly celebrated his visit. His speech in Dublin packed the city’s streets. Convenience stores stocked up on presidential souvenirs and knickknacks. Musicians celebrated Obama’s homecoming in song. The Corrigan Brothers wrote the minor hit “There’s No One As Irish As Barack O’bama” while fiddler Martin Hayes still regularly performs “The Barack Obama Reel.”

Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill performing “The Barack Obama Reel”

Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign couldn’t have been far from his mind, speculated political analysts. Irish-Americans constitute a large voting bloc, so his ceremonial visit to Ireland played well to a key demographic. As Obama noted in a later address in Belfast, Northern Ireland, “When I was first running for office in Chicago, I didn’t know this [his Irish ancestry], but I wish I had. It pays to be Irish in Chicago.” It pays nationwide as well.

Obama fever culminated in the half-charming, half-embarrassing Barack Obama Plaza. The $9 million project opened in 2014, long after Obama's first visit, but an earnest love persists across the Emerald Isle. In 2016, the service station wondered whether it should change its name to “Trump’s Pumps” or “Hillary’s Fillery.” The change never happened. Obama fever’s symptoms are long-lasting.

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Michael McCarthy

Michael is an undergraduate student at Haverford College, dodging the pandemic by taking a gap year. He writes in a variety of genres, and his time in high school debate renders political writing an inevitable fascination. Writing at Catalyst and the Bi-Co News, a student-run newspaper, provides an outlet for this passion. In the future, he intends to keep writing in mediums both informative and creative.

How New Media Can Be Used to Spark Interest in Elections Among Young Ghanaians

There has been growing evidence around the world that young people are increasingly becoming apathetic about taking part in events such as elections, according to Ceron in a study conducted in 2015. Given that university students are also increasingly using social media, scholars have started to look at how it can be used to invigorate their diminishing interest in governance as well as in elections.

We conducted research  on how students in Ghana used new media. The aim was to understand the motivations and political information needs that influenced them to use new media technologies for elections.

We found that young people were drawn to use new media technologies to have conversations on elections. Posts going viral gave them a sense of relevance and empowerment. Another reason was that it gave them the opportunity to engage in the comfort of their private spaces – offline.

The findings should enable more strategic targeting of university students by political actors and institutions. This could be in terms of turn out efforts, political messaging, communication as well as political campaigning. This has already been done successfully in a number of countries.

How it’s been done elsewhere

New media technologies have been used in a myriad of ways to mobilise people to vote in various countries. For example, in Italy in 2014, Sweden in 2010 and in the 2010 British elections.

Astute use of technologies was also evident in Barack Obama’s campaigns for the US presidency in 2008 and 2012.

In Africa, social media was used during the mass protests of 2011 in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. In all three cases, people uploaded photographs of the protests which then went viral. This reinforced global appreciation of the need for democratic change in the countries.

Social media has also been used to monitor elections and disseminate results. For instance in Nigeria, young Nigerians embarked on the “Enough is Enough” campaign on election vigilance to hold politically elected leaders accountable.

In Ghana, some civil society groups launched the “the Voter Decides” campaign in 2012. This sought to track the process of voting, monitor collation of results and ensure that the right results were announced.

But the deployment of various new media technologies by political actors for elections and other civil engagements hasn’t necessarily translated into reversing the dwindling interest in politics. This is clear from research by communication scholars like Christian Vaccari.

It raises the question: what motivates the young new media user to deploy the technologies from an informational and communications perspective?

Why Ghanaian Students use new media technologies

In our research on Ghanaian students, our main findings were that:

• Students are drawn to deploying new media technologies for the currency and breadth of information they can access.

• They are both consumers and producers of media content.

• They are able to navigate their way around the gatekeeping or filtration process conducted by editors.

• The opportunity to go viral or become virtual celebrities in seconds when they click the “enter” or “send” button is an experience they relish.

• The virtual space is a safe haven for many.

• They spend a great deal of time on social media. This is attested to when a student asserts: “my world is on the mobile phone.”

The potency of social media

Our findings reinforce the view that social media is a viable resource that can be relied on for voter mobilisation, campaigning and voting. Students suggest that political candidates must find ways to woo Ghanaian students into conversations before election fever catches on. If the candidates delay, their efforts will be perceived by the youth as self-serving.

Practically, many young people want to be part of the process of constructing political narratives offline rather than on campaign platforms. They want to be in their safe haven – online and anonymous – where they can’t be reproached for their youthful exuberance.

These kinds of conversations have the potential of reducing apathy and getting young people involved in the political process.

Political actors and candidates should seriously look at how media technologies can be used for effective reciprocal political communication with university students. If they understand what motivates and influences students to use new media technologies for conversations on the elections, political actors are much more likely to be able to count on the involvement of young people in conversations on the elections and participation in the electoral process.

Adwoa Sikayena Amankwah is a Senior Lecturer of Communication Studies, University of Professional Studies Accra

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