Los medios de comunicación y su incidencia en la activación de procesos de Accountability a nivel subnacional

Abstract

Accountability, which implies the responsibility of individuals and organizations to account for their actions, is crucial in the fight against corruption to guarantee transparency and integrity. In that sense, the media play an important role by exposing corrupt practices and monitoring officials and institutions. Thus, this research seeks to analyze the influence of the media in the activation of accountability in Santander. To achieve this objective, a qualitative and documentary approach methodology is developed, and, in addition, the causal process tracking technique or "process tracing", added to a model that identifies the key variables and establishes causal relationships between them that correspond to three independent variables (media coverage, citizen participation and assigned agencies) and the dependent variable (activation of the accountability process). The main analysis information arises from a sample of cases selected according to the media and by departments, where 16 news items for the Department of Santander were selected to be analyzed using the causal process tracking method. The results allow us to establish that corruption in the Department of Santander is a complex problem that negatively affects the economic and social development of the region. The media play an important role in activating social and vertical accountability by acting as a voice for the citizenry and a mechanism of social control over public officials; horizontal accountability and Answerability and Enforcemen are also activated. In conclusion, it was possible to identify that the independent variables are related to the activation of the accountability processes, but considering the role of the assigned agencies and citizen participation as the most relevant sources of activation, and to a lesser extent, the media.

Date of Award	2023
Original language	Spanish (Colombia)
Awarding Institution	Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga Maestría en Políticas Públicas y Desarrollo
Supervisor	Camilo Alipios Cruz Merchán (Supervisor)