Condições de publicidade em processos de accountability: uma análise a partir da Comforça de Venda Nova

Abstract

The research deals with the publicity conditions, considered as the product of a series of factors that act together to confer a public character to a given object. It discusses the notion of publicity conditions, problematizing the dynamics it assumes in the field of public communication in processes of government accountability to citizens. The method of the case study was adopted, taking as an empirical object the forums of the Commission for Monitoring and Supervision of the Execution of the Participatory Budget - Comforça of Venda Nova. The participatory instance coordinated by City Hall of Belo Horizonte regularly brings together groups from the peripheral region of the city for the accountability of the implementation of the program's works. After a theoretical review, the analysis of the accountability dimensions of Comforça of Venda Nova, the participating public, and accessibility, availability and generality factors in the configuration of the publicity conditions of the forum was done. The procedures of documentary analysis, systematic observation of the forum, semi-structured interviews with managers and participants and a survey with the public of the participatory instance were used. In addition to finding a relationship of mutual dependence between publicity levels and the dimensions involved in the accountability process studied, the research showed that publicity conditions are not given a priori nor do they depend only on what the organization or the object itself does. The publicity conditions and the public character of an object are continually reconstructed in a complex way in the relations with the publics.