Participação e deliberação em ambiente online: um estudo do portal e-democracia

Abstract

This work aims to understand the vision of participation and the valorization the Brazilian Legislative Power, specifically the Chamber of Deputies, makes about political participation mechanisms by the case study of the Portal e-Democracia, sponsored by that institution. The tools of e-Democracia, by allowing citizens to participate in the discussion of topics arising from legislative agenda, bring up the use of the internet as, possibly, an effective link between representatives and the represented. In other words, the proposal of e-Democracia is to generate discussion, both among citizens and between them and their representatives in order to contribute to the formulation of public policies. The research observed the development of Legislative Communities housed in the experience in question, able to engage any interested user, and it could identify an attempt to play the optimal model based on the binomial deliberation-voting, designed to guide the operation of the process of political decision production within the committees. It appears, however, a lack of systematization, at the portal, required by this ideal model, since there is an effective link between the stages of debate and decision. From this perspective, we have delimited as empirical corpus two communities whose discussions are of fundamental importance for the country - those aiming to participate in the construction of laws related to Brazilian budget 2013 (Budget Guidelines Law and the Annual Budget Law). The parameters the analysis is based on were divided in to levels: 1) Participative (Information, Motivation, Channels layout) and 2) Deliberative, which was sectioned into: 2.1) Structure of the forums (Identification; Openness; Agenda; Moderation; Public Space Strong x Weak) and 2.2) Content of posts (Reason-Giving; Reciprocity; Mutual respect; Common-good orientation). By that analysis, it is concluded that the initiative gives good results in relation to the participatory criteria adopted as a parameter of this research and suitable for an experiment that aims to enhance the participatory potential preferences of their users. Regarding the deliberation moment, however, the portal has not yet be successful, just to concentrate on being a device of multiple tools, which favored the expansion of participation instead of forwarding the citizens to a more qualified contribution through the discussions developed in the forums.