CITIZEN OBSERVATORIES FOR INCLUSIVE COMMUNICATION: A CONCEPTUAL PROPOSAL FOR MUNICIPAL COMMUNICATIVE GOVERNANCE

Objectives: To examine the role of municipal communication in contemporary approaches to local governance, citizen participation, and active aging; to develop a conceptualization of municipal communication as a constitutive dimension of local governance; and to propose the Citizen Observatories for Inclusive Communication (OCCI, the Spanish acronym) model as a mechanism of evaluative coproduction. Methodology: The study adopts a problematizing review approach aimed at theory building. Through a selective, theory-oriented strategy, it examines contributions from collaborative governance, coproduction, public communication, digital governance, communication accessibility, organizational learning, and age-friendly cities and communities. Results: The review identifies a metaevaluative deficit associated with local administrations’ limited capacity to assess, through participatory processes, the communicative conditions that structure interactions between citizens and institutions. Municipal communication is generally treated as an instrumental function of dissemination and transparency, despite its influence on effective access, understanding, and citizen participation. In response, the OCCI model is proposed around participatory diagnosis, communicative cocreation, evaluative experimentation, and the institutionalization of learning. Conclusions: Municipal communication can be understood as a relational and cognitive infrastructure of local governance. The OCCI model is a conceptual proposal intended to strengthen institutional intelligibility, communicative inclusion, organizational learning, and the democratic capacity of local governments, particularly in contexts of population aging and administrative digitalization.