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’ 1938 radio play is an adaption of H.G. Wells’ novel of the same name, first published in 1898. It tells the story of an alien invasion and the ensuing conflict between mankind and an extra-terrestrial race from Mars.
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 New York Times headline read, “Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact.”
He 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. But it’s even more important to understand how the press magnified and distorted those reactions, creating a story that terrified the nation all over again, so that we can recognise when the same thing happens today."
He turned 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.
In September 1938, one month prior to the plays broadcast, Hitler signed the Munich Agreement annexing portions of Czechoslovakia and creating the ‘Sudetenland’. 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.
CBS
8) Why might the newspaper industry have deliberately exaggerated the response to the broadcast?
It has been suggested that the panic was trumped up by the newspapers to rubbish this new medium which it viewed as a huge threat.
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. 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.
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.
Preferred- entertaining realistic broadcast
Oppositional- frightening and believes it's real
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?
It is unlikely to have fooled the audience in quite the same way – or with the same authority – as a series of radio news bulletins.
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?
People really trusted what they heard on their radios and, in this context, it is not surprising that some fell for the eerily realistic broadcast, even though the alleged explosions took place on Mars and the invaders were extraterrestrials.
2) How did newspapers present the story?
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?
Since it came on the scene commercially in the 1920s, many feared radio would kill off the other main media industries at the time. The radio brought news, music and more into people’s homes in an accessible, realistic and direct way; arguably there was no need to go and buy a newspaper or record if
you could just switch on your radio.
4) What does the article say about regulation of radio in the 1930s?
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.
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.
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 Terror Brings Panic in All Areas; People Lose All Control’
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