Democracia digital e comunicação desintermediada: um olhar a partir do neoinstitucionalismo

Abstract

This article intends to reflect, through a literature review, on the concepts of digital democracy and the new communication and information technologies as potentially democratic and influential factors in political behavior. In this sense, we seek to analyze, from the point of view of neoinstutionalism, the role of social media, especially Twitter, as an informal communicative channel of disintermediation between representative and represented in parliamentary activity in Brazil. From this perspective and using data from Twitter, the objective is to understand how the relationships mediated by social media act as a possible extension of the mandate of parliamentarians as political actors. The results indicate that the performance of parliamentarians in digital social media as an expression of disintermediated interactive communication stand out as a phenomenon of political communication with reflexes that indicate, albeit minimally, a change in the behavior of representatives and in their political action. In the context of the COVID-19 CPI, there were considerable increases in the average number of interactions via Twitter tools by parliamentarians. On the other hand, it was observed that part of the senators that made up the Covid-19 CPI maintained an inexpressive performance on the platform.