war of the worlds

A detailed Summary of war of the worlds


The article "The Invasion from Mars: Radio Panics America", author and source unknown, is a review of the Orsen Wells's, "War of the Worlds" phenomena, and the first mass communication study researching this event, Hadley Cantril's (1940)The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. The event referenced above was a dramatic radio broadcast of a fictional alien invasion. The broadcast aired on October 30th, 1938, and created wide spread panic among many people who believed it to be a factual news account. The phenomenon has been traditionally used to support theories that believe mass communication has a powerful effect on its audience. Although the early communication research of this event is generally considered faulty, the event itself was believed to cause panic with at least a million people, and the research into it was the first of its kind.

The article first provides us with some background as to the social environment of the audience during this first broadcast. Radio Broadcasting in 1938, although it had been around for over two decades, had only recently reached critical mass and acceptance among American Society. It had replaced the newspaper as the


With the blatant research mistakes performed within the original study. And the fact that subsequent research has proven much of the results and theory wrong, this paper is of more historical importance to the communication field then applicable. It could be said that the events that took place on October 30th, 1938 were caused less by the Wells's broadcast and more by the social/political situation of the audience. Compound that with the naivete of the populace towards the belief that broadcasting was a "pure" medium, and we could see how such a panicked situation could occur. I wouldn't argue that War of the Worlds was a brilliant broadcast, but I find it unlikely that any contemporary fictional mass communication could inspire such mass hysteria, no matter how brilliant.

The research into the phenomenon was conducted on three fronts. The first was through personal interviews of 135 people. The second was through two different surveys, one by CBS covering 920 people a week after the broadcast, and another by AIPO covering many thousand and was done much later. The third was by review of newspaper accounts and mail volume to CBS and the FCC. Based on the surveys the researc

Some common words found in the essay are:
FCC Based, Science Fiction, Psychology Panic, War Worlds, American Society, Radio Broadcasting, Panics America, critical ability, mass communication, Hadley Cantril's, panic people, Invasion Mars, , checked external information, broadcast people successfully, checked external, radio broadcasting, heard broadcast, people heard, external information, spot reporting, people heard broadcast, panic people research, people successfully, october 30th 1938,

Approximate Word count = 798
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Movies

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