O Uso Cidadão da Internet: estudo exploratório dos usuários do Procon

Abstract

Does the use of the Internet for the public power enlarge the conscience citizen? In Belo Horizonte, the disponibilization of information and public services through the Internet did contribute to the use citizen of that technology of information? The research intended to approach this problem under the focus of the Informations Science. This research, however, didn't intend to answer in totum to the placed subject that the use of the Internet facilitates the amplification of the citizenship. Starting from an use study, to explain this reality was intended inside of its limitation, once the citizenship notion places us that the use of the new technologies of information and communication, by itself, are not enough to guarantee such amplification, because this depends on countless factors, and mainly of a minimum of social equality. However, we attended the construction of the infrastructure of a public sphere in the country, with the structuring of the Internet, but its use, demonstrated in the official statistics, in the researches on the profile of the Brazilians users and even for the media, it is not enough to mensure the dimension and to analyze the reflexes of the Internet about the amplification of the citizenship. Looking for in the studies of use of the electronic nets in the USA, in the decade of 90, we found the parameters to analyze the use citizen's of the Internet in Belo Horizonte, starting from the users of the homepage of Procon-PBH. The users' of Procon-PBH demographic profile didn't identify them as a group specialized in the community, once a reasonable balance was verified among the sexes, wide education, age and income levels, signalling a good representation of the population of the capital, indicating that in spite of the social inequality in the country, the access to the site of PBH and the homepage of Procon is possible the whole ones. The main verification is that the existence of a public space, even if virtual, it reinforces the exercise of the citizenship. The users Internet of Procon-PBH that informed to reside in the capital, pointed for the contribution of that access in the involvement of the community's subjects and in the improvement of the knowledge about the action of PBH. Those that pointed for the contribution of the use of the homepage in the improvement of the knowledge about the performance of the municipal administration, also accused the improvement of the life quality. If those verifications point for the condition citizen's of the user Internet of Procon-PBH amplification, its exercise is still very restricted, as it was demonstrated by the precarious use seeking a larger interaction with the community through the resources that the Internet offers.