2. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
• BACKSTORY
- Based on the 1898 book by
H.G. Wells
- Mercury Radio Theater
Company dramatized it on
CBS Radio 10/30/1938
- Directed and narrated by
Orson Welles who quickly
rocketed to fame after it
aired.
3. PUTTING IT IN CONTEXT
• Historical Context:
In 1938, the lead-up to WWII
was being broadcast from
Europe – listeners heard very
real reports of invasion just
weeks earlier
Mars was a popular topic of
speculation and fear –
remember, even a trip to
moon was decades away
4. PUTTING IT IN CONTEXT
• Media Context:
Radio was a new medium with
few stations/networks, 1938
was pre-television, no
Internet, relatively few
phones, people could not rely
on countless other media
channels for information as
we can now
The timing of the broadcast
was also crucial to its effect
5. PUTTING IT IN CONTEXT
• Psychological Context:
People were more likely to
believe what the media/radio
told them – they weren’t used
to being “Punk’d” or
deceived yet
Primed by war reports, people
were more apt to believe it
was now happening to them
6. ON THE AIR – 10/30/1938
• Actual 1938 Radio Broadcast
• Approach this from the perspective
of an actual listener in 1938
(subjectively).
• And approach this with the
perspective of a modern-day media
student (objectively).
• THEN ASK YOURSELF:
• WHAT WORKED?
• WHAT DIDN’T WORK?
7. WHAT WORKED?
• No commercials (unsponsored)
• Updated fiction presented as LIVE radio
• NO extra “dramatic” music
• The sudden silences
• The apparent “mistakes”: “Am I on?” and “Speak
louder, please.”
• Using a man who sounded like the president, FDR (but
wasn’t identified as such)
8. WHAT WORKED?
• Tuning in at just the right time
• The repeated use of the “Breaking News” motif
• Encouraging the audience to lean in and “listen
please”
• Using the radio itself as part of the story - Using the
radio as part of the story: first witness was “listening to the
radio” when he heard the falling objects; turning the radio over
to the government because “radio has a responsibility to serve
the public…
9. WHAT DIDN’T WORK?
• Ridiculous timeline
• Lack of coverage on other radio stations
• The cut-back to the studio after the first attack
• You had to tune in and tune out at just the right
moments for it to successfully freak you out
• The narrative jump ahead in time after the “attack”
11. THE AFTERMATH
• Newspapers reported that panic ensued, people fleeing the area, others
thinking they could smell poison gas or could see flashes of lightning in
the distance.
• It’s been calculated that out of the six million who heard the CBS
broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were
'genuinely frightened’”. While Welles and company were heard by a
comparatively small audience (in the same period, NBC's audience was an
estimated 30 million), the uproar was anything but minute: within a
month, there were 12,500 newspaper articles about the broadcast or its
impact, while Adolf Hitler cited the panic as "evidence of the decadence
and corrupt condition of democracy."
• Later studies suggested this "panic" was less widespread than newspapers
suggested. During this period, many newspapers were concerned that
radio, a new medium, would make them defunct. In addition, this was a
time of yellow journalism, where newspapers were not held to the same
standards as today. As a result, journalists took this opportunity to
demonstrate the dangers of broadcast by embellishing the story, and the
panic that ensued, greatly.
12. • MODERN EXAMPLES:
• Balloon Boy
• CNN Porn
• Michael Jackson Alive?
IS IT REAL?
13. • “We wanted to show how easily users
can be manipulated on the Internet
with hoax videos,” RTL spokeswoman
Heike Schultz told The Associated Press.
“Therefore, we created this video of
Michael Jackson being alive, even
though everybody knows by now that
he is dead — and the response was
breathtaking.”
IS IT REAL?
15. CZECH TELEVISION EXAMPLE
• June 17, 2007
- Viewers of a National Weather Channel morning
broadcast featuring panoramic shots of mountains with
relaxing muzak saw this:
16. ZTOHOVEN STATEMENT
• Partial statement made by art group ZTOHOVEN:
“On the 17th of June 2007 this group attacked the space
of TV broadcasting. It distorted it, questioned its
truthfulness and its credibility. It drew attention to the
possibility of using images of the world created by the
media in place of the existing, real world. Is everything
we see daily on our TV screens real? Is everything
presented to us by the media, newspapers, television,
Internet actually real? This is the concept our project
would like to introduce and remind of.”
17. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
•But a WAR OF THE WORLDS
hoax itself could never
happen again, right? After
all, it’s been so publicized
and discussed…
18. OVERVIEW
• Main Points
- Context is crucial in
understanding media
- Even “fake” media
manipulates and affects
society in real ways
- A WOTW-like media event
can happen again and, in
fact, happens in small ways
all the time
19. OTHER VERSIONS
• Several films, TV Series,
other Radio
Productions, computer
games, comic books,
and even a musical
adaptation in the form
of a concept album.
