War of the Worlds: Blog tasks

War of the Worlds: Blog tasks

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?

War of the Worlds: Historical Context 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?

30th October 1938

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

MANY FLEE HOMES TO ESCAPE ‘GAS RAID FROM MARS’ – PHONE CALLS SWAMP POLICE AT BROADCAST

OF WELLES FANTASY A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 o’clock last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. G. Wells’s fantasy, “The War of the Worlds,” led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York.

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

`Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News’ 

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

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.

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

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.

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

To get attention 

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

During this era radio was still a relatively new medium but was widespread in homes across America.

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

The fake news.

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

Where the audience will know what they are hearing is fake and be aware and not spread the word.

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 could any media product create such an impact today? Are audiences too sophisticated and media-literate to be fooled by a similar stunt? In the late 1990s, and inspired by Orson Welles’ 1938 broadcast, two young filmmakers made the low budget film The Blair Witch Project. Supposedly made up ‘found footage’ shot by three student filmmakers who go missing while shooting a documentary about a local legend (the Blair Witch),

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? 

Realsitic radio convention.

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.

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

It made articles and newspapers decrease in price.

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

The original broadcast of TWOTW still makes for brilliant entertainment today, thanks to its fast pace and fantastic acting. It’s even better if you recreate the conditions of the 1930s.

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

George Gerbner’s cultivation theory how they tricked the audience with fake news.

 

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 Play Terrifies Nation;

Hysteria Grips Folks Listening in

Late’

‘Radio Fake Scares Nation’

‘Fake Radio War Stirs Terror’