Qualification of Public Communication processes in the social and democratic strengthening of the right to information: the Portuguese and Brazilian realities

Abstract

This article aims to show important concepts of Public Citizen Communication, comparing the communicational practices, within the scope of local power, between Portugal and Brazil, two countries united by the same language, but with different realities in the social and cultural planes. Based on the Authors' Survey (2018-2019), the work seeks to describe the analysis carried out in four Portuguese and Brazilian cities with the objective of knowing and evaluating the processes of information transmission, by the public power, as a social and constitutional. Through content analysis, the methodology starts from a triple sampling section through interviews with managers and professionals involved in the transmission of public information, in the application of questionnaires to citizens and, finally, through the documentary analysis of the printed and available materials in the internet (websites). The evaluation of the importance of dialogue and effective understanding of information was based on the precepts of Edgar Morin, Luiz Beltrão and Jürgen Habermas, within the scope of the Complexity Paradigm, Folkcommunication and Theory of Communicative Acting, respectively. When confronting the historical model and claiming the right to information to current public policies of transparency and total quality, the results highlighted the importance of dialogue as a democratic instrument for excellence in Public Communication for the benefit of citizenship. The conclusion recommends that the procedures for transmitting information, while public, respect the cultural background and life history of each individual: a new form of communication, dialogical, adopting a simplified language adapting technical knowledge to the common, allowing an effective understanding of the content.