Os orçamentos participativos na imprensa regional: um estudo de caso

Abstract

Information and communication are essential for the democratic process, regardless of the model of democracy. However, in the deliberative model, the sharing and listening of different points of view acquires a central role for debate and decision-making. In this sense, the set of experiences called Participatory Budgeting (PB) which establish with the participation of citizens, co-decision mechanisms to determine the destination of a percentage of the public budget, can constitute an interesting field of analysis to study the importance of access to information for deliberation. On the other hand, despite the growing assertion of new media, as digital media, traditional media such as newspapers, radio and television continue to play a key role in shaping citizens’ image of the world. Thus, considering the local nature of the PB, we intend to study the news in the local press, based on a case study of a municipal deliberative PB. The selected object of study is the information about participatory budget published in local and regional newspapers, based on the case study of Odemira’s PB, one of the oldest of this kind of experience in Portugal. In this first step of the research, a con-tent analysis of the articles published in these media was carried out, with a quantitative approach to the number of news sto- ries published and their characteristics (publication periods, distribution by titles, themes or sources). The goal of this investigation was to verify the volume and conditions of the published information as well as the topics addressed, and the sources cited, to understand the framework of the PB in the local press. This analysis of the articles of six local and regional newspapers in the Alentejo region over a period of six years, corresponding to the lifetime of Odemira’s PB, reveals these publications’ fragility to function as effective public spheres, demonstrating the scarce presence of civil society as a source. A work that should be extended with a deeper analysis of the news discourse.