This article starts with the following idea: Questioning social conditions and viewing practices in context contributes to understanding and analyzing some mechanisms that are too often considered from the perspective of their results or their “effects.” Based on the case of Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela and with a multimodal empirical approach (combining ethnographic observations, questionnaires. and group interviews), we demonstrate that the study of reception conditions and contexts, as well as their collective and concrete modalities, can shed light on the issue of the day-to-day reception of political discourse. Social properties, dispositions, and the relative positions of viewers shape their reception throughout the process. Social characteristics, contours, and internal distinctions of the groups receiving political speeches, which are largely set by their routines and day to day interactional spheres, are decisive in understanding what happens in political communication.