Práticas da comunicação pública no contexto digital: o Senado Federal no Facebook

Abstract

This thesis investigates the public communication practices on Facebook of the Federal Senate of Brazil. The objectives are to analyze the types of information and the characteristics of publications (language, subject selection criteria, use of audiovisual resources); the interaction situations and the Federal Senate's position in the comments; the questions directed to the page and how these demands are solved; conversations (participant behavior, topics discussed, expression of feelings) in the publication that received the most comments during the study period; and which of the prerequisites of public communication (transparency, access, interaction, ombudsman) are present on Facebook. The material was collected by the Netvizz application between July and December 2017. The methods adopted are Content Analysis and Depth Hermeneutics. An interview with the coordinator of the social media center was necessary to better understand the dynamics of the Legislative's communication work on virtual social networks. The theoretical discussion is based on the concepts of public communication and its prerequisites and also addresses the visibility of public institutions in the digital context, the action and impact of the Facebook algorithm in accessing political information and experiences of governments on the internet. The results show that the publication of publications fulfilled the requirements of offering access and providing transparency to information of public interest, even if not everything that occurs in the Federal Senate is published on Facebook. The followers' questions that were answered denoted topics of public interest, such as the new labor reform rules. However, in relation to the totality of comments left in the publications in the analyzed period, it was found that the moments of interaction between the Federal Senate on Facebook with its followers were negligible. Overall, comments in a publication on labor reform expressed a lack of confidence in political institutions and their representatives and discontent with Brazilian politics, shown in the communication exchanges between participants. It can be said that the prerequisites for public communication are present on the page, however the practices of this type of communication in the virtual environment continue to be a challenge in terms of ensuring a full experience of transparency and interaction.