Referees' reports - 2010

Review of the article “Participation in radio programmes and immigration. The Romanian case”

The article analyses programmes aimed at various immigrant groups in Spanish radio stations, be they commercial, of public ownership, or ethnic, paying particular attention to the spaces of participation for the audience in general, and for the listeners of Romanian origin, in particular.

This immigrant community is the largest in Spain, having multiplied its presence in numbers five times in the last five years.

The work, based on longitudinal qualitative content analysis, develops two main units of analysis out of the five types of audience participation in radio: according to their purpose and according to their thematic planning.

The study also looks in detail at each one of the selected programmes and provides interesting data on radio consumption among immigrants in general and, more specifically, among Romanian citizens, as well as the Romanians’ image among Spanish people.– Dr. José María Legorburu - Professor of Radio at the San Pablo-CEU University (USP CEU), Madrid.

The article is pertinent and contemporary because it examines the phenomenon of integration of minorities in social journalism and the radio.

In particular, it analyzes the participation of the Romanian community in four Spanish radio programmes devoted to immigration.

Although the selected sample is small, open-mindedness leads the author to contextualize the research within the media consumption habits of the Romanian population in their own country of origin, based on different sources.
In addition, there are interviews to the presenters of the radio programmes analyzed, which lead the author to denounce the scarce participation in radio spaces of the Romanians, whose image is affected by harmful stereotypes.– Dr. Silvia Jiménez Martín - University of Salamanca / Camilo Jose Cela University, Madrid.