Transparency is a communicative process whose aim is to provide citizens with information that will promote their participation in public affairs. However, its application is often reduced to a legally stipulated administrative act. In contrast, this article sets out the principles, attributes and evidence of transparency from a communication perspective, taking into consideration that transparency is treated as a process through which recipients obtain, understand and use information. This study focuses on the transparency of local town councils, although most of the concepts could be applied at other levels of public administration. To establish this framework, the legislation and application of transparency in three countries (Spain, Ecuador and Colombia) was studied using the Infoparticipa method designed with a communication approach in mind. A comparative study was then carried out using methods designed in other disciplines. Through this approach, the benefits of transparency were categorized to define six principles—disclosure, strengthening, visibility, comprehensibility, dissemination and humanism—and eight attributes of transparent information: veracity, timeliness, accessibility, usability, intelligibility, universality, pluralism and plurality. For each attribute, the evidence of its application was determined. This framework clarifies the perspective of transparency for participation from a communication approach.

Information on the management of local administrations and the actions of the political leaders who govern them is essential for citizens to exercise their political rights. It is therefore necessary for these administrations to provide quality information that the media can use as sources for their news stories. At the same time, these media outlets have to compare and report while taking into account the plurality of their audiences. However, in local settings, collusion exists between political power and media owners that restricts the plurality of news, favoring the dominant political interests and hiding the demands, interests and protagonism of other social actors. We study this problem in the Caribbean Region of Colombia. We analyze the information that the town halls of the main cities in the region provide to the media and how the largest print newspapers and main regional television news broadcasters report on local politics. We compare these news stories to establish whether there is a plurality of news reports. In addition, we analyze the key elements of the news items disseminated by private media outlets to establish whether they report a limited vision of reality: the topics covered, the protagonists referred to in headlines and news stories, and the sources against which the news and images are compared. The results reveal shortcomings that result in similar information between public information and private media content, thus limiting the plurality of news reports and the social protagonism of other social agents. Ultimately, this hinders quality journalism that satisfies the interests of citizens.

New technologies have allowed traditional map production criteria to be modified or even subverted. Starting from the communication sciences—journalism in particular—and digital humanities via the history of communication, we show how to use interactive digital maps for the production and publication of knowledge through and/or for participation. Firstly, we establish the theoretical-conceptual framework necessary to base the practices, dividing the elements into three areas: interactive maps and knowledge production (decentralization, pluralization, reticularization, and humanization), maps as instruments to promote political and social participation (egalitarianism, horizontality, and criticism), and maps as instruments for the visualization of data that favors the user experience (interactivity, multimediality, reticularity of reading, and participation). Next, we present two cases that we developed to put into practice the theoretical concepts that we established: the Mapa Infoparticipa (Infoparticipa Map), which shows the results of the evaluation of the transparency of public administrations, and the Ciutadania Plural (Plural Citizenship) web platform for the production of social knowledge about the past and the present. This theoretical and practical model shows the possibilities of interactive maps as tools to promote political participation and as instruments for the construction of social knowledge in a collaborative, participatory, networked way.

This research examines the newsmaking practices followed by local journalists in the Colombian Caribbean Region when covering information related to local administrations. It also explores the practices of communication officials in the Office of the Mayor, focusing on how they inform both citizens and journalists in the region. The data collection method involved semi-structured interviews with sixteen press and television journalists from the Caribbean Region, as well as with three communication professionals in charge of local administrations in Barranquilla, Santa Marta, and Cartagena. Subsequently, a thematic analysis was performed to identify patterns in the transcripts of these interviews. The topics discussed with journalists included the number of people covering local news in the newsroom; sources of information; criteria for selecting published information, and the presence of censorship or self-censorship in reporting on local management. For the communications professionals in the Offices of the Mayor, the topics covered the mission of their office; criteria for publishing information; channels used for disseminating information to citizens and journalists; the significance of the Transparency and Access to Public Information Law for their office, and the budget allocated for media advertising. The results revealed that censorship and self-censorship occur among journalists when reporting on local administrations, particularly when scrutinizing their management. For those in charge of communication in the respective Offices of the Mayor, the directives from each are definitive in producing information. Both situations prevent citizens from receiving complete, transparent, and good quality information, which is detrimental to democracy