Internet and citizen participation Internet and citizen participation

The digital revolution plays a pivotal role in the public sphere of contemporary societies. Social media have established themselves as a contested public space where various actors disseminate their messages. For instance, political parties utilise these platforms to propagate their ideologies and political agendas, aiming to influence citizens’ perceptions. Similarly, civil society organisations and other citizen groups primarily employ these platforms as channels for expressing protests and dissatisfaction with political governance. To investigate how internet access affects citizens’ engagement in the political sphere and to identify media instances where digital connectivity fosters civic participation in Angola, platforms such as Facebook and Instagram were analysed. These social networks were chosen due to their significance as spaces for political discussion in the country. Angola exemplifies the rising prominence of digital activism, with the utilisation of these platforms highlighting the expanding role of the internet in civic mobilisation and public debate. This research adopts both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Three Facebook pages and two Instagram pages, all "publicly accessible", were selected, and data pertaining to 2022 and 2023 were extracted. This period was marked by active social media usage by political actors and supporters of political parties to mobilise, communicate political ideologies, and address issues concerning politics and social challenges. The analysis of these pages employed the CrowdTangle tool, a data collection and extraction platform that facilitates the export of data from various sections of Facebook and Instagram (Rieder, 2013).The most frequently published content on the analysed Facebook and Instagram pages during the specified period centred on themes such as "calls for votes, election results, public petitions, public complaints, challenges to election results, police repression, arrests during protests, protests, transparent communication, electoral transparency, and the monitoring of the electoral process". These posts garnered substantial engagement from Angolan users on the platforms.