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In contemporary society, the media landscape is complex and dynamic. Smartphones and tablets are proliferating, while the TV set is being passed over by other devices as the channel for TV content. These changes have implications on user behaviour, business models, technological platforms and content development. This article explores multi-screening, an emergent practice that combines watching TV and using a mobile device in articulation, by addressing the users' motivations to engage in such practices. Our theoretical framework presents the state of the art of research on multi-screening and debates the main issues in the field using contributions from Mobile Communication Research and Uses and Gratifications Theory. Our empirical work consists of focus group discussions with multi-screeners, exploring the goals, needs, preferences and expectations associated with these practices. Our results identify uses where the activities on the TV and the mobile device are unrelated as more common, and two main gratifications are drawn out of these practices: utilitarian (associated with making a better use of time and being effective in accomplishing tasks) and affective (related to a constant and pressing need of being up-to-date with what is going on in the world and being connected to one's network of relationships).

Multi-screening is an emergent but fast-growing and fast-changing practice, evolving along with the technologies that mediate it. This article presents a study on multi-screening, i.e., simultaneously or sequentially engaging with more than one screened-media. Based on the uses and gratifications theory, our study focused on the most common multi-screening scenario—engaging with the smartphone while watching TV—in order to explore triggers, motivations, gratifications, and attention distribution. The methodology is qualitative in nature, including ethnographic journals and follow-up interviews to a sample of 30 young adults, and the data was collected in Portugal and Spain. The activities performed on each device are usually disconnected and motivated by the need to enhance the entertainment afforded by the TV or to obtain a sense of efficiency. The attention is distributed in alternated periods, and the smartphone has a greater ability of demanding attention and retaining the engagement.

Each time a new communication medium is introduced and reaches relative generalization, it creates new balances and articulations among the existing media, thus reconfiguring the whole mediatic and communicational landscape (Bolter and Grusin, 2000; Jenkins, 2006). In contemporary society, two types of media with totally different characteristics and operating logics coexist, articulate and converge among themselves – massmedia and social media – resulting in a new way of communicating, describes by Manuel Castells (2009) as mass-self communication. Within public relations, several authors recognize a transition from asymmetric communication theories and models, in which organizations publicize information a strongly control their messages, to more symmetric conversation and dialogic models that are emerging as a consequence of PR professionals using social media as communication channels and tools (Kunsch, 2003; Solis and Breakenridge, 2009; Scott, 2010; Macnamara and Zerfass, 2012). Although most of these authors highlight the loss of control over their messages that organizations are undergoing, others explore the emergence of new power balances that are not necessarily symmetric or equalitarian (Edwards and Hodges, 2001; Coombs and Holladay, 2012; Dutta, Ban and Pal, 2012). This paper explores civic movements as an example of the new articulations among massmedia and social media that emerging, as well as new power balances between the public, media and politic agendas (McCombs and Shaw, 1972). Using qualitative methods, this paper empirically explores the recent civic movements against austerity in Portugal, that culminated with the demonstrations "Geração à Rasca" ['Precarious' Generation] (12th March 2011) and "Que se lixe a Troika!: Queremos as nossas vidas" [Screw Troika! We want our lives back] (15th September 2012), discussing the articulation of massmedia and social media that was done both by citizens and communication professionals (PRs and journalists, as well the role played by each of these types of media in publicizing, mobilizing and in the social impact of these movements.

Los youtubers se han convertido en un fenómeno mundial; debido al hecho de pasar más tiempo en casa se amplifica su estatus y relevancia, especialmente entre los niños. El creciente acceso a Internet, la forma fácil e intuitiva de utilizarlo, el control sobre lo que quieren ver, la cercanía al público y la capacidad de sorprender e innovar son algunos de los motivos que hacen a los youtubers tan atractivos. Con una metodología cualitativa, llevada a cabo en dos fases secuenciales de recogida de datos, primero con niños y después con youtubers, se quiere responder a la siguiente pregunta: ¿Qué influencia tienen los youtubers en la formación de la opinión de niños de 8 a 12 años sobre temas de actualidad? Se concluyó que los niños ven a los youtubers como modelos a seguir, y sus contenidos, una fuente de información fiable; admiten haber cambiado su forma de pensar gracias a ellos. Aunque su influencia disminuye a medida que crecen, se demuestra que tienden a adoptar los puntos de vista y las perspectivas compartidas por los youtubers. Es, además, una oportunidad para que los niños aprendan y conozcan temas importantes desde una edad temprana de forma más accesible e interesante.

Young people struggle with permanent online connection that is associated with their generation. This article looks at teenagers' affective relationship to connectivity and disconnectivity, and how it is socioculturally influenced by the media, family, and peers. It reports on an interview study with 36 teenagers between 15 and 19 years of age from Norway and Portugal. Our findings evidenced how disconnection may arise out of a latent feeling of "disaffect" generated in the experience of the ambience of connected and platform culture as well as the media; or of the unavailability created by how teenagers spend their leisure time, which is influenced by families' moral economies. Teenagers have to perform affective labor in managing the different, sometimes contradictory, forces that converge in the experience of connectivity. Managing digital disconnection appears as an individual—but socially produced—moral obligation to self-govern, to which teenagers have unequal conditions.

Any technology adoption is shaped by a myriad of factors that sometimes conflict in their ultimate goals and outcomes. So is the case with mobile Internet (m-Internet) adoption and diffusion. This paper discusses this process from the stakeholders' and users' perspectives and confronts their understanding and attitudes towards this technology with three complementary theoretical models: network theory, activity theory, and the technology acceptance model (TAM).The study presents results for the use of m-Internet in a southern European country and frames those in light of the activities, here understood as effects of the network, undertaken by the users. We seek to assess whether individuals perform a different set of activities when using m-Internet and how different forms of access result in different network effects, adoption processes, and distinct forms of interaction. The depicted study involved a qualitative stage, consisting of a set of interviews to stakeholders of the mobile communications industry and a quantitative study that involved the survey of a nationally representative sample of individual users. The findings of these studies provide several contributions to the understanding of m-Internet adoption and diffusion and the role network effects play in them.

En el ámbito del proyecto de investigación IGAEDIS (Da civitas Igaeditanorum à Egitânia. A construção e evolução da cidade e a definição dos seus territórios da Época Romana até à doação dos Templários - séculos I a XII) se han realizado diferentes actuaciones arqueológicas en la actual aldea histórica de Idanha-a-Velha (Portugal). Además, la revisión de anteriores intervenciones, complementadas con la realización de dataciones absolutas, han permitido atribuir una cronología más temprana de la asignada hasta ahora a los dos "baptisterios" documentados en el yacimiento. Esta nueva lectura nos lleva a plantear un renovado marco de reflexión y crítica histórica, tanto de estas construcciones - piscinas bautismales - como del contexto en el que se insertan. Un ejercicio presentado en este trabajo de manera diacrónica, con el objetivo de mejorar el conocimiento sobre la evolución histórica de este sitio arqueológico entre los siglos IV-VIII.

This study investigates the role played by parents as mediators of young children's access and engagement with digital technologies. In Belgium, Germany, Latvia and Portugal, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 families in each country, including one child between 6 and 7 years old. Our findings show that parents of young children mainly play the role of 'gatekeepers' when it comes to facilitating and constraining access to and use of digital technologies. Parents' perceptions of the efficacy of digital technologies as responsible entertainment and as educational tools influence the technologies available at home and accessible to the child. These perceptions in turn impact parents' mediation strategies with regard to children's actual use of digital technologies, with restrictive mediation – of time and less of content – and supervision applied most. The power exerted by parents over access and use may be understood as a limitation of the children's rights. On the other hand, parents are not always concerned with the right of protection as they believe – sometimes incorrectly – that they are in control of the content their children are exposed to.