Much more than airtime: radio strategies to foster an inclusive Latino identity in the Basque country

ABSTRACT

New opportunities for launching media projects targeting minority migrant audiences have emerged in the wake of international migration [Georgiou, Myria. 2001. “Mapping Diasporic Minorities and their Media in Europe. Studying the Media.” A working paper for the EMTEL project “Diasporic Minorities and Their Media: A Mapping.” http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EMTEL/minorities/papers/]. However, most start-up enterprises in this category fail to develop effective strategies for establishing a dialogue between the minority audiences they serve and the native-born local populations. This paper, which examines the role radio plays in the integration of newcomers to the Basque Country, analyses the successful programming and outreach initiatives of Candela Radio in Bilbao, Spain, as well as the barriers to multiculturalism that must be overcome in complex societies like the Basque Country, in which deeply rooted traditions and values [Shafir, Gershon. 1995. Immigrants and Nationalists: Ethnic Conflict and Accommodation in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Latvia and Estonia. New York: State University of New York Press] are inextricably bound to language. The results of this qualitative study indicate that publically funded Radio Candela has not only managed to construct an audience that bridges the traditional gap between local migrant and native communities but is also actively fostering the development of a hybrid Latino-Basque identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural communication
• identity
• radio
• Latino-Basque

Acknowledgements

This article is part of the research production of the Consolidated Research Group ‘Gureiker’ (IT1112-16) (2016/2021) (Basque Government) and of the project titled ‘Active audiences and the viralization and transformation of the journalistic messages’ (CS2015-64955-C4-4-R) (2016/2019) (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain). Moreover, the authors are grateful to the staff of Candela Radio for their collaboration with this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.