Communication studies are today very focused on new technologies and the changing contexts of present audiences, trying to envisage future outcomes in media uses. However, a full understanding of our media landscape must be aware that it hosts several layers of once new technologies

, practices and contexts.
For example, early radio listening sets the question of multitasking inside the home, and later of media portability, which are conspicuous issues in communication research nowadays. The fact that gender dimensions framed multitasking and portability, in Portugal during the middle of the 20th century, draws our attention to how social relations have been decisive in the shaping of media reception practices. But also to how these relations have at the same time been shaped by those same practices because of the continuous negotiation of its modalities of use.
When television became popular in Portugal, throughout the 1960’s, broadcast users already had specific habits and norms of behaviour, according to their different social roles and contexts. The transformations that occurred then have to be understood within a history of permanent social re-contextualisation of the media in the changing scenarios of everyday life. Questions such as housework, access to public spaces, religious practices, family routine practices, material consumption, neighbourhood relations, and cultural imaginaries show to be historically intertwined with gendered media uses. Examining feminine practices and memories of past reception can highlight the ways in which, among constraints and possibilities for agency, women have found and made their own condition. But it also sheds light on the diversity of experiences encompassed by the category of feminine audience according to social class, local context or biographic histories.
Despite the promised richness, researching past reception has received less attention from scholars than other aspects of media history, such as the retrospective study of media genres, organizations and technologies. This volume aims to contribute to a better knowledge of this neglected field, both by reflecting about theoretical questions and by presenting empirical data. Several contributions in this book use oral history and other qualitative techniques, but surely past audiences are not an easy field for empirical research, not least because it requires scholars to face complex questions about memory.