A comunicação pública e a cidadania nos movimentos ambientais : uma história de resistência da Cascata Calza

Abstract

This research proposes to relate the concepts of public communication and citizenship as a way to understand how communication processes made by environmental movements occur in opposition to the implementation of hydroelectric projects. The methodological perspective is the participant research as a scientific, political and pedagogical resource of shared knowledge that seeks the social transformation and the emancipation of the subjects (CARLOS BRANDÃO, 2006). This perspective starts from a broad theoretical approach searching for the apprehension of the multiple versions of reality. For that, the theoretical approach starts discussing the forms of appropriation of the environment that reproduced the dynamics of hydroelectric projects. Next, it involves the history of the construction of citizenship and the development of social movements of the chosen reality. The empirical research object is the movements against the attempts of construction of hydroelectric enterprise in Cascata Calza in the city of Cotiporã - RS. The objective to this study was to understand the perspective of public communication and citizenship from the history of that social movement. The research involved two stages: an investigation of the documents produced by social movements, and an analysis of the group members’ narrative, deepening the understanding. The study made it possible to find that the environmental movement against the enterprises used precepts related to the theoretical conceptions of public communication, taking the debate to the public sphere in defense of the natural environment. As a conclusion, a series of factors allowed some achievements of the environmental movement, highlighting the recognition of communication as a constituent of its social process of resistance.