Participation and relative autonomy in the EBC’s Curator’s Council

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the acting of the Curator's Council of Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), the main space of civil society participation of the communication company of public service in the country. From the analysis of documents, it seeks to analyze the profile of the actors who take part of the Curator's Council and the segments of civil society they represent, reflecting on the relative autonomy of the organism. In addition, it is adopted a content analysis of the debates about the EBC work plans in order to think about the participation of the actors in the deliberations of the Curator's Council. In this sense, it is adopted a maximalist perspective of participation, understanding that it goes beyond the interaction with the content, in the media sphere. Similarly, it is understood the limitations of the representation process and, therefore, the proposal is to reflect on what groups can take part of this space, since the beginning of EBC until today. Furthermore, it is understood that the process of participation of civil society and the autonomy of the Curator's Council reflect on the relative autonomy of the enterprise as a whole.

The need for not more, but more socially relevant audience participation in public service media

“…Hence, interaction, co-creation, and participation became buzzwords in both PSM theory and policy (Lowe, 2009). Some public broadcasters, such as BBC, France Télévisions, and the Dutch public broadcaster NPO (Nederlandse Publieke Omroep), explicitly aimed to give the audience a central role in their organization (Vanhaeght and Donders, 2015;Vieira and Couthino, 2016).…”