JOURNAL

Radio audience in European minority languages: Important reality and structural correlation

Iñaki Zabaleta-Urkiola, Tania Arriaga-Azkarate, and Aitor Castañeda-Zumeta | European Journal of Communication

This paper looks at the audience of public radio channels in indigenous minority languages across Europe, including examples from Spain, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Researchers found that in areas of high mutual intelligibility – where the language could be understood by most people – audience reach of minority channels were significantly higher than in regions where the language could not be broadly recognized. They also found that these public media organizations proved to be important in cultural preservation and re-energizing the language, allowing for a more diverse group of people to speak the minority language and improving cultural diversity within the broadcasting region. In some areas minority radio outperforms their majority language counterparts, demonstrating their impact and showing large amounts of audience reach, which justifies increased funding and a key role within the public media sphere in countries with indigenous languages that demand representation.