Magistrados na sociedade em rede: o uso de redes sociais pelos juízes e seus reflexos na reputação judicial

Abstract

This paper discusses judicial reputation as a product of the interaction between public opinion and the exercise of the judicial function by individuals and institutions, especially in face of the participation of judges and magistrates in discussions and reflections given in the digital public sphere, considering that the activity of these members in social networks has the ability to influence the perception of different audiences on the Judiciary. The question that arises is if the presence of judges in social media generates new incentives for judicial behavior. In this perspective, it approaches the Theory of Judicial Reputation as a tool for analyzing the impact of the activity of legal agents on the construction of judicial reputations (individual or collective). It also aims to expose the theoretical possibility of applying the methodological tools of Social Network Analysis as a mechanism to verify the social media discourse of these public agents in social networks on the internet. The study is exploratory, seeking to understand the object of analysis through research in works related to the subject, accessed on platforms such as Scielo, Capes, Google Scholar, and in publications in UFRN's Library System. At the end of the paper, it became evident that the quality of the judicial function, and consequently the legitimacy of the decisions issued by the Judiciary, can be evaluated using the concept of judicial reputation, reinforcing the importance of developing research on the subject. As with all social segments, judges are part of a reality in which they share physical and virtual interactions. In the context of network society, it was found that the presence of legal institutions and their members in social media platforms indicates a new order of magnitude of interactions with different audiences, in which the behavioral incentives involved may not be within the reach of the institutional design already established. Hence the need to apply specific methodological approaches, which are able to extract meaning from the relationships and connections established among users of social media platforms, in order to understand the public perception of the Judiciary (or the judicial reputation itself), built from this digital environment.