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AN EXPERT PANEL LINKED TO THE RESEARCH PROJECT News, Networks and Users in the Hybrid Media System. Transformation of the Media Industry and the News in the Pots-Industrial Era was held on the 18th of November, 2021, to improve the definition of approach to our research objects with the help of highly reputed scholars. Sílvia Majó-Vázquez (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford Univerity, United Kind¡gdom), Antonis Kalogeropoulos (University of Liverpool, Unityed Kingdom), Johan Lindell (Uppsala University, Sweden) and Ana Sofía Cardenal (Univeristat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain) were invited, and kindly accepted, to join our research group to a hand-on meeting to deal about how to do research on news consumption, news avoidance and news inequalities. This paper is one of the results of the research project News, networks, and users in the hybrid media system. Transformation of media industries and the news in the post-industrial era (RTI2018-095775-B-C43) (Mineco/Feder), Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Competitiveness (2019-2021), and of Programa COFRE – Departament de Comunicació - Ajuts per a la preparació de recerques i propostes de projectes-llavor sobre COVID19

In this paper we aim to investigate the relationship between Internet use, motivation and political participation. In particular, we aim to find out if, by reducing participation costs, use of the Internet changes the importance of motivation in the classic explanations of participation. In order to explore this question, we have used data from survey 2736 by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), which addresses the issue of political participation and Internet use. The analysis shows that Internet use has a direct impact on participation, regardless of motivation, and that skilled Internet users do not need to be motivated or interested in politics in order to participate in at least one online political activity. El objetivo de este artículo es investigar la relación entre el uso de Internet, la motivación y la participación política. En concreto nos interesa descubrir si el uso de Internet cambia la importancia que se da a la motivación política en las explicaciones clásicas de la participación. Para examinar esta cuestión, se ha empleado la encuesta 2736 del Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) que versa sobre participación política y usos de Internet. Los análisis muestran que el uso de Internet tiene un efecto positivo sobre la participación, independientemente del interés por la política, y que los usuarios de Internet que son habilidosos con este medio no necesitan estar motivados o interesados en la política para participar al menos en una actividad política por Internet.

Institutions affect key dimensions of the political process –policy, stability, and conflict. The choice of institutions is thus consequential. I argue that transition modes affect the choice of institutions in predictable and systematic ways. The more balanced power is between the two main bargaining forces –regime elite and opposition– the likelier that the resulting institutions will be pluralistic. Contrarily, the more unbalanced power is in favour of regime elites vis a vis the opposition, the likelier that institutions will be majoritarian. The argument is tested for El Salvador and Guatemala.