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institution with its own set of rules. From this perspective, mediatisation refers to the adaptation of different social fields or systems to these institualionalised rules, which are described as “media logic” (Altheide and Snow, 1979). Non-media actors must conform to this “media logic” if they want to be represented in the media or successfully participate in media culture and society. It is clear how “media logic” has imposed itself in the field of politics, making itself visible in the ba-nalisation of politics, now marked by trends such as spectacularisation (in Mazzoleni’s and Sfardini’s (2009) words “pop politics”), which ultimately leads to a loss of authentic public space (Donsbach, 2011).

The proliferation of the media and its technological development does not necessarily imply an increase and improve-ment in political information. The use of political information does not only depend on its availability but also on factors such as consumer habits, interest, and competition, correlated with sociodemographic characteristics such as age, edu-cation, nationality or occupation (Meilán, 2010).

Traditionally, a direct relationship between the media and the functioning of democratic life has been established. Nor-mative media theories, those that determine their nature and functions, are still in place even now that digitisation has led traditional media into a crisis of unforeseeable consequences. As Rodríguez Polo and Martín Algarra (2008) point out, this political function of the media is essential to any democracy. The relevance of this influence on politics depends on the quality of its contents. Research has pointed to the political nature of media content and the responsibility it has for the functioning of the democratic system (Martín Algarra, 2005).

1.1. Political Communication in the digital ecosystem

In the current media landscape, along with what has been indicated so far, there is a convergence between traditional media and online social media that affects the development of politics. New and old media intermingle and co-evolve, shaping a complex system based on adaptation, interdependence, and diffusion of power. Thus, what emerges is a hy-bridisation “between the older logic of transmission and reception, and the newer logic of circulation, recirculation, and negotiation” (Chadwick, 2013: 208). As Millaleo and Cárcamo have noted, this hybridisation reshapes all the social di-mensions of the information process: “in the purely social dimension, it restructures the power relationships among the actors, in the temporal dimension, it affects the information flows, and in the object dimension, it modifies the meanings of the news” (2014: 14).

There has thus been a transition from the “news cycle” to the “political information cycle” (Chadwick, 2011). The former is typical of the traditional media’s logic, which bases professional routines on work guidelines for news writing and publica-tion. These routines have been altered due to the rate of immediate publication that the Internet allows, which is already part of the users’ connective experience (Martín Algarra, Torregrosa and Serrano-Puche, 2013). In this way, the intercon-nection processes fostered by social networks have forced traditional media to adapt to the “political information cycle.” It is a complex assembling wherein the professional media intersect with the practices, genres, technologies and temporary nature of the new digital media, and where power relations between news actors are subject to continuous tensions and changes. In the life cycle of political information, the intervention of news professionals and other actors’ point of view (politicians, activists, citizens, etc.) are combined, contributing to the construction and responce of the news in real time.