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Paper short abstract:

Since the 2014 general elections, Mozambique has been experiencing a multiplicity of spaces that allow interaction between political actors and society, specially with the introduction of digital communication platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to understand the political impact of social networking platforms on the general elections in Mozambique, held in October 15, 2014. It focuses on how electoral observation was carried out in Mozambique using online tools. The study is based on an ongoing research project exploring political of young people in politics through the Internet in Mozambique. It will adopt a qualitative approach (interviews and digital ethnography) to sketch out the landscape of online electoral observation in Mozambique. The positions here are the result of abstraction and generalization - the particular positions of individuals or groups will only ever approximate such generalized positions, which are reconstructed from the complexity of everyday situated experience. As a preliminary conclusion, we have noted that the Internet allows the 'emergence of new perspectives' in the case of the political participation in Mozambique, despite the reduced access to the Internet.

Keywords: political participation, electoral observation, social networks sites

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