Radio : War of the worlds

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

It tells the story of an alien invasion and the ensuing conflict between mankind and an extra- terrestrial race from Mars.

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.”

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

He suggested that hysteria it caused was not entirely a myth. “Instead it was something decades ahead of its time: history’s first viral-media phenomenon.”

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

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?

Many listeners believed that what they were listening to was an account of an invasion by the Germans. One listener claimed “I knew it was some Germans trying to gas us all, but when the announcer kept on calling them people from Mars I just thought he was ignorant.”

7) Which company broadcast War of the Worlds in 1938?

The most shocking of these was in 1949 when a radio station in Ecuador’s capital Quito updated and adapted the script to fool its 250,000 population. 

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

So, the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’s programme, perhaps to discredit radio as a source of news.

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

This states that audiences consume and respond to media texts in an unquestioning way, believing what they read, see or hear. This 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.

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.

11) Applying Hall's Reception Theory, what could be the preferred and oppositional readings of the original broadcast?

The 1938 and 1949 radio broadcasts of War of the Worlds clearly had the power to deceive at least some of the listening audience.

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?

Given that audiences received the text in a movie theatre (or on video and DVD) it is unlikely to be able to fool the audience in quite the same way – or with the same authority – as a series of radio news bulletins.