Social participation in the perspective of the actors of a social network community: a case study

Abstract

Because of its challenging consolidation, the social participation has been a quite recurrent subject nowadays. This piece of work consists in a case study developed in Belo Horizonte's North Sector Social Community Network and aims to bring light, through its integrants points of view, on how participation occurs in this space. Topics as deliberation, social participation, network design and evolution of participation in the health scope were discussed as a theoretical background for the study development. In order to understand the study object, the methods used were: documental analysis, participatory observation and implementation of semi structured interviews with ten members of the Social Community Network. To examine the outcome material, four analysis categories were constructed around the aspects that interfere in the participation quality: context; actors involved; design; participation and deliberation. It is observed that the Social Community Network comprises a space for the society informal deliberation constructed under the perspective of health promotion and of the intersectoral approach concreteness. The Network has a hybrid composition and faces challenges concerning its inner and social mobilization dynamics. However, multiple contributing factors for an effective participation were identified, as well as the improvements promoted by the network experience reverberating to its members and to the territory aspects.