Participatory journalism in Mozambique

This small case study addresses the phenomenon of participatory, non-professional and non-commercial informational communications in Mozambique, where, during social unrest in 2008, a popular blog – which is not primarily journalistic in nature – was alimented with eye-witness reporting by mobile phone calls and SMS (text messages) from a network of citizen journalists throughout the country. The blog – Diário de um sociólogo [Diary of a Sociologist] – was the best (indeed, in many cases the only) available source of information about the protests and the violent state response to them, whereas established local and international media provided little coverage and tended to offer reporting deeply influenced by the official accounts (which had an interest in minimising and ridiculing protests instigated by government policies). This research expands on the experience of one of the authors as a user, while resident in Maputo, of that blog.