Radio: War of the Worlds CSP (1938)

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?

The narrative and history of Welles’ radio adaption of War of the Worlds gained noteriety for the reaction it received from press reporting an early example of mass hysteria caused by 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 people 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.” as 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 and “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?

His interpretation of War of the Worlds reworks a Victorian narrative about an alien invasion and turns it into an exciting radio play through his use of borrowing the conventions of the radio newscast, he is able to create real moments of shock and awe, creating a pastiche and a hybrid form, he blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction in a way that audiences had never seen.

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

In September 1938, a month prior to broadcast, Hitler signed the Munich Agreement annexing portions of Czechoslovakia and creating the ‘Sudetenland’, concern grew rapidly and for many it seemed that another world war was inevitable and so 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 and this was further worsened by the fact they many listeners tuned into the broadcast five minutes after the start and would have missed the disclaimer, creating a techno-panic.

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

The company that broadcast War of the Worlds in 1938 was CBS Radio Network.

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

The papers may of taken the opportunity presented by Welles’s programme to discredit radio as a source of news, sensationalising the panic to prove to advertisers, regulators and the general public that radio management was irresponsible untrustworthy.

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

Orson Welles’ broadcast is often used to support the ‘Hypodermic Needle Theory’, that carries little weight today and even in the past, as there is no concrete proof that 30's audiences were tricked at such a large scale as well as external socio-political contexts add to that disapproval.

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

Gerbner’s Cultivation Theory may offer a better 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 behaviors rather that opinions and with War of the Worlds, it could be argued that an audience continued panic past the incident shows a change in attitudes, defying logic..

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

I believe 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.

‘Radio Fake Scares Nation’

‘Fake Radio War Stirs Terror’