Media and Citizenship: Voice and Vote, Participation and Choice
"Media and Citizenship: Voice and Vote, Participation and Choice" was a participatory exercise carried out in 1997 and initiated by the Department of Political Science of the University of the Andes; resulting from the common interest to develop actions in the field of civic journalism and to expand application possibilities of the so-called deliberative methodology in Colombia. To achieve this, the Political Science Department established an alliance with the newspaper El Tiempo, which expressed the desire to offer a dialogue space for its readers and the programmatic projects of the candidates for the Presidency for the period 1998-2002. It sought to publicize the government programs of the 14 candidates, so that readers had better information to make their decision in the October 1997 elections. Additionally, it was intended that the postulants to the public position knew the main expectations and demands of the citizens of Bogotá ahead of its possible management as governors of the city. The two organizing entities jointly determined that the deliberative methodology was appropriate to facilitate the dialogue. In this way, thematic citizen forums were held according to the topics of greatest concern and interest to the citizens in which the main questions were raised about the government proposals. Representatives elected in these forums later met with the candidates to express their concerns and raise questions. All the results of these deliberations were documented by the newspaper El Tiempo, including the concerns and questions of the citizens and the candidates' responses.
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- not backed by constitution nor legislation, nor by any governmental policy or program
- Frequency
- single
- Mode of selection of participants
- restricted
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields no decision
- Co-Governance
- no
Means
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Ends
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