Right to Information and Social Rights in the Context of Contemporary Capitalism
Name: LUCILEIDE ANDRADE DE LIMA DO NASCIMENTO
Publication date: 14/12/2007
Summary: This bibliographic research analyses the right to information in the context of social rights and the manner in which the right to information is capable of contributing to the acquisition of social rights in the era of capitalism. Information and knowledge are defined as a social phenomenon that is defined by, as well as defines, various social processes. The social value attributed to information and its effectiveness in the creation of opportunities for change determine the correlation between the right to information and social rights due to the potential of information to contribute the establishment of opportunities for autonomy and processes of participation among others. This research comprehends the right to information as a symbolic recourse that reproduces and represents the actualization of information as a facilitator and mediator of social relations that are of an informative nature. As such this research analyses the relationship between information and capitalism based on three interconnected thematically articulated topics: the genesis of the relationship between capitalism and information based upon the concept of the technological revolution as explained by Mandel (1985); the effects and impact of technological information and communication on social processes; and the emergence of the information based society as political strategy to maintain the hegemony of capitalistic interests. This relationship is characterized in terms of its capitalistic based appropriation of information and subsequent aggravation of social inequality. This research also perceives the social State as information based State that provides for individual or collective information based demands. Local authority is also analyzed as means of informational based governance and as a means of satisfying the informational and communication based needs of a society as a strategy to legitimize the right to and form of information presented to civil society. Social control is considered as a mechanism to: establish the effective management and socialization of local information based upon the right to information; establish channels of participation for civil society in a regime that is based upon and that promotes informational based governance.
