One of the difficulties faced by the modern European society is to recognize and to perceive itself fully as multicultural. In this context, the audiovisual media can play a major role. But at the moment there seems to be a clear distance between the reality of things and their reflection that the media referring to minorities.
Unequal and insufficient representation of immigrants and minorities in the European mass media, in particular television, is a fact widely and regularly confirmed by more than twenty years of research.
As it has been summarized by the Dutch linguist T. A. Van Dijk, working on the relationship between racism and the mass media, "the media, today as well that 50 or 100 years ago, tend to assimilate foreigners, immigrants, refugees, or minorities to a problem and refer to 'them' rather than as an integral part of ’we.’ However, this resume echoes an idea put forward by E. Mace that "representation in mass media reflects, at one point, specific national collective imaginary tensions" (Mace, 2006 b: 115).