Being a very recent event in history, studies on internet and politics have flourished in the beginning of the 21st century. Specifically on the absorption and use of this tool by the legislative branch, which is the main focus of this thesis, Cristina Leston-Bandeira (2007) states that we know little about how Internet has impacted parliaments (LESTON-BANDEIRA, 2007:658), however there is a growing trend for this kind of research. What is observed is that the importance given to parliament in this field of study has much to do with the conviction that the internet could indeed allow for broader and deeper participation from citizens in politics (LESTON-BANDEIRA, 2007). The justification lies in the following interpretive framework: if the parliament is one of the paths that connects citizens to politics, therefore it makes sense to study the impact, possibilities, and changes the internet may bring to this connection (between representatives and represented). Specifically, the research done here has essentially a theoretical objective presenting its first empirical test. Thus, the reflection on the possibilities of the internet in the legislative political arena are made. To do so, three theories from political science were taken as base and closely related, allowing the arguments web to be woven: delegation theory, informational theory, and fire alarm theory. The three theories were manipulated in a way that first a reflection on the Brazilian political reality was done as well as how our institutional engineering is built. Afterwards, the possibility that this institutional engineering could offer solutions for some specific problems of Brazilian representation is pointed out, if adjusted to the digital reality. Thus, it is suggested that: if Brazil is a coalition presidentialism system where the delegation system (principal-agent model) is necessary and if the Brazilian legislative has a problematic informational deficit issue, but despite that has fire alarm points to keep itself abreast of national and local discussions, could it be that this institutional construction could be visualized, to some degree, in the environment of the internet, since real world and virtual world are not a dichotomy but in fact exist in a continuum? Consequently, the focus of this thesis was indeed to think and discuss the existence of a trigger by fire alarm on the internet. It is theorized that there is the possibility of broadening the Brazilian delegation model, in which the representative could be a principal and the citizen their agent, in an informational perspective and that citizen could, through fire alarms on the internet (specifically on the social network Facebook), trigger their representative with debates, information, and opinions, thus giving them new knowledge and diminishing, to some degree, the informational deficit experienced during their term. The thesis is, therefore, a theoretical attempt to design, research, and understand the triggering mechanism by fire alarm on the internet. The structure of the work was done as to make the theoretical model the focus of the thesis. Thus, the centrality of the theoretical model throughout the writing is noticeable, since the text revolves around it and for it. To tie in and justify the model an extensive statistical and qualitative discussion of primary and secondary data was done. The highlight of the empirical analysis is the case study on the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, specifically its 55th legislature (2015-2018). There the analysis of data collected from the 513 deputies can be seen as well as the in-depth analysis of 20 of these deputies, from whom 518 posts and 11488 comments were analyzed.

Author: Helga do Nascimento de Almeida
Source: https://repositorio.ufmg.br/handle/1843/BUOS-AU3JRN