Radio Research in Spain - Characteristics, Perceptions and Impressions from the Scientific Community

Research in communication has recently gained relevance, leading to the development of a significant and specialised corpus of studies. Along these lines, this work focuses on radio studies from the perspective of the scientific community - an innovative approach in the framework of communication meta-research. Starting with the outcomes of an initial survey, an in-depth study was then conducted to focus on the importance, themes and quality of radio research. We looked into the 31 most important authors of contributions published in scientific journals (1980-2013) to understand their perceptions and impressions about Spanish research. This study helped confirm that radio research is still a minority and individual endeavour. The respondents explained that this is due to limited support from research and academic institutions. In any case, radio researchers find the object of their study to be relevant, influential and well rooted, even if the topics and approaches are permeable to the context where the studies take place.