Democracia & direito à informação: estudo sobre a implementação da lei de direito à informação e a construção da cidadania comunicativa em Moçambique

Abstract

The present study, entitled "Democracy & Right to Information: A Study on the Law of Access to Information and the Construction of Communicative Citizenship in Mozambique", aims to understand the implementation of the Mozambican Right to Information Law based on the perceptions and uses of different social sectors in Mozambique (Journalists, Researchers, Academics and public institutions that monitor the implementation of the Law), as well as the construction of communicative citizenship in this African country. Thus, this thesis presents a study on the relationship between public and private institutions funded by the government and the Mozambican citizen, in the context of the implementation of the Right to Information Law, from the perspective of journalists, researchers and academics. For the research, we started with the assumptions that there are divergent approaches between the official Mozambican voices and the reports of studies done by Mozambican and international non-governmental organizations on Mozambican democracy in general, and on the relationship between public and private institutions funded by the state and the citizenry mediated by the Right to Information Law, The current state of implementation of this law was also unknown, which made it difficult to know if the objectives for which the law was approved are being met, as well as the activities carried out in the dissemination of the law, and who the major consumers are. Based on the assumptions above, we formulated and used a questionnaire with closed and open questions for preliminary data collection, which allowed us to build categories and elaborate a questionnaire for final data collection to journalists, researchers, and academics, as well as analyze the African Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa, the Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique, and other infra-constitutional laws that enable the implementation and use of the Mozambican Right to Information Law, as well as this law. The data show an academy and media controlled by the political power or government, as well as the inexistence of a consistent strategy for implementation of this law, which makes the law not known by the citizen and much less used in the search for information of public interest in public institutions, which weakens the citizen's participation in public life, as well as the absence of communication platforms between the government and the citizen. Hence, we suggest a serious debate on this matter and the search for a strengthened policy for the implementation of this law and the creation of more platforms for interaction between government and citizens in the construction of communicative citizenship in Mozambique.