Abstract
The process of the strengthening of Brazilian democracy includes the now existing city councils, institutions of popular participation and citizenship which permit the expression of several community sectors and social actors in the regulation of public policies in areas such as public health care and educational systems, development and the rights of children, adolescents and the elderly. The media assume an important role in this context as they depict city councils’ activities in a positive or a negative image, encouraging or discouraging participation. This paper indicates how these bodies were represented by ten newspapers from six regions of the State of São Paulo, off ering parameters to evaluate the quality of the democratic culture composed by the media in the most densely populated state of the country. The media were found to be exerting a positive potential role in making democracy more eff ective on municipal levels.Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.