War of the Worlds

Media Factsheet

Read Media Factsheet #176: CSP Radio - War of the Worlds. You'll need your Greenford Google login to download it. Then answer the following questions:

1) What is the history and narrative behind War of the Worlds?

Orson Welles’ radio adaption of War of the Worlds has become notable not for the broadcast itself but for the reaction it received, and the subsequent press reporting of the audience’s reaction to the broadcast. It is often highlighted as an early example of mass hysteria caused by the media and used to support various audience theories.

2) When was it first broadcast and what is the popular myth regarding the reaction from the audience?

Broadcast live on 30th October 1938, popular myth has it that thousands of New Yorkers fled their homes in panic, and all across America people crowded the streets to witness for themselves the real space battle between earth and the Martians.

3) How did the New York Times report the reaction the next day?

The following morning newspapers across the country revelled in the mass hysteria it had caused. The New York Times headline read, “Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact.”  The New York Times switchboard received 875 calls from concerned listeners wanting to know where they would be safe.

4) How did author Brad Schwartz describe the the broadcast and its reaction? 

Author Brad Schwartz in his 2015 book ‘Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News’ suggests that hysteria it caused was not entirely a myth. “Instead it was something decades ahead of its time: history’s first viral-media phenomenon.” He argues that “the stories of those whom the show frightened offer a fascinating window onto how users engage with media content, spreading and reinterpreting it to suit their own world views.

5) Why did Orson Welles use hybrid genres and pastiche and what effect might it have had on the audience?

His version of War of the Worlds reworks a Victorian narrative about an alien invasion (which he considered “boring”) and turns it into an exciting radio play through his use of pastiche. By borrowing the conventions of the radio newscast, he is able to create real moments of shock and awe, which almost certainly account for the strong reaction it received. By creating a hybrid form – mixing conventional storytelling with news conventions – Welles blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction in a way that audiences had never experienced.

6) How did world events in 1938 affect the way audiences interpreted the show? 

In September 1938, one month prior to the plays broadcast, Hitler signed the Munich Agreement annexing portions of Czechoslovakia and creating the ‘Sudetenland’. Europe’s failed appeasement of Germany was viewed with much concern and for many it seemed that another world war was inevitable. At this time, both the radio networks, including CBS, frequently interrupted programmes to issue news bulletins with updates on the situation in Europe. As a result, audiences became familiar with such interruptions and were thus more accepting of Welles’ faux newscasts at the beginning of the play. Indeed, for the listeners, it didn’t sound like a play. This was further compounded by the fact they many listeners tuned into the broadcast five minutes after the start and would have missed the disclaimer. Instead what they would have heard were further interruptions, the convincing voices of experts and an eerie silence as a reporter’s words are cut off. They were tuned in and the upcoming war events caused audiences to believe the fictional narrative of the broadcast, creating moral panic.

7) Which company broadcast War of the Worlds in 1938?
The CBS Radio Network.

8) Why might the newspaper industry have deliberately exaggerated the response to the broadcast?

The papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’s programme, perhaps to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalised the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted.” 

9) Does War of the Worlds provide evidence to support the Frankfurt School's Hypodermic Needle theory? 

Orson Welles’ broadcast is frequently cited as an example to support passive audience theories, such as the Frankfurt School’s ‘Hypodermic Needle Theory’, which might be true of the audiences of the 1930s, unfamiliar with new media forms like radio, but in the modern age it carries less weight. It is questionable as to how far most of the audience were actually duped by the broadcast. As has been noted, those who ‘bought into’ the idea of an invasion, may well have been influenced by external factors such as the social and political context of the time. It was not impossible to believe that a foreign power was invading American soil in 1938.

10) How might Gerbner's cultivation theory be applied to the broadcast?

Gerbner’s Cultivation Theory might offer a more accurate explanation of the audience’s behaviour in response to the radio broadcast since it emphasises the longer-term effects that media texts have upon audiences. Based on his research into television viewing, cultivation theory states that high frequency viewers of television are more susceptible to media messages and the belief that they are real. Applied to War of the Worlds it could be argued that an audience familiar with the frequent interruptions to radio shows over the weeks leading up to the broadcast did not question the faux invasion broadcasts during Welles’ production.  Heavy viewers of TV are thought to be ‘cultivating’ attitudes that seem to believe that the world created by television is an accurate depiction

of the real world.

11) Applying Hall's Reception Theory, what could be the preferred and oppositional readings of the original broadcast?
I think the preferred reading is for audiences to be entertained with the fictional narrative, relevant to the historical period of time due to similarities linked to invasion. However, the oppositional reading could be that audiences took it the wrong way and actually somewhat believed that the world was being taken over by Martians, creating a sense of moral panic in society, due to the upcoming world war, which made them alert and frightened. 

12) Do media products still retain the ability to fool audiences as it is suggested War of the Worlds did in 1938? Has the digital media landscape changed this?

The 1938 and 1949 radio broadcasts of War of the Worlds clearly had the power to deceive at least some of the listening audience, but the new digital age, alongside the technological advancements have allowed audiences to being active users rather than passive, so they are more aware of the differences between fiction and reality, meaning in the contemporary world, media products are way less likely to fool audiences unless they have some strategic planning that is relevant to the modern mainstream audiences.

Media Magazine article on War of the Worlds

Read this excellent article on War of the Worlds in Media Magazine. You can find it in our Media Magazine archive - issue 69, page 10. Answer the following questions:

1) What reasons are provided for why the audience may have been scared by the broadcast in 1938? 

Renegade director Orson Welles (now most famous for directing and starring in the film Citizen Kane) chose to tell the story using realistic radio conventions – such as flash news bulletins, expert interviews and vox pops – and set it in contemporary New Jersey. He didn’t intentionally do it in order to to fool the public – the show even carried a disclaimer at the beginning and the end, making it clear that it was fiction. Nevertheless, for those who tuned in late, it seemed totally authentic and there was a bit of a scare: there were panicked phone calls to the authorities, angry calls to the CBS network, and some locals in the town in which the dramatization was set reportedly roamed around with guns.

2) How did newspapers present the story? 

The press at the time spun the whole story very differently, something that media scholars now believe was done on purpose. The papers made a conscious decision to present it as a ‘hoax’,  inferring there was something malicious about the intentions of those making and broadcasting it, and were swift to point out the sinister power of the medium of radio itself.

3) How does the article describe the rise of radio? 

They said that there was a huge competition against radio as it came on the scene commercially in the 1920s, while many feared radio would kill off the other main media industries at the time.

4) What does the article say about regulation of radio in the 1930s? 

Another industrial context was that of regulation of the radio. As a relatively new media form, there was still widespread scepticism about radio’s benefits and a lot of concern about its potential downsides. Just like the introduction of newer media today, older generations feared the corruption of the young by uncensored, unregulated radio content.

5) How does the article apply media theories to the WOTW? Give examples. 

They give credit to given to a scientific experiment by Albert Bandura in the 1960s, in which he got children to watch a video of a man beating up a Bobo Doll and they copied the violence. Even though the experiment has been thoroughly discredited (by David Gauntlett, among others), Bandura’s work remains potent visual ‘proof’ that the media can directly affect us. Another reason we believe that the media can affect what we do and think is George Gerbner’s ‘cultivation theory’, which says that the media can provoke certain responses from us if it repeats or cultivates a message often enough. To use the example in hand, Gerbner might say that TWOTW has become so legendary precisely thanks to repetition in the media. While cultivation theory may explain why the newspapers’ version of TWOTW hysteria has gone down in the history books, it does not explain why many listeners loved the show enough to write or call into the network singing its praises. In this sense, cultivation theory is not very nuanced and does not really help us explain why some people react in the opposite way than expected to a media event.

6) Look at the box on page 13 of real newspaper headlines. Pick out two and write them here - you could use these in an exam answer.

‘Fake Radio War Stirs Terror’ - ‘Radio Fake Scares Nation’