section c 30% overall exam andrew crissell understanding radio: ‘radio is a blind medium= you cant see it (you have images and pictures in your head).

war of the worlds may seem to be about aliens but it is not it may be about communist Europe fascist Russia.

‘hard times are a breeding ground for misinformation’ (j.mcdougall)

1. Anxious era

The broadcast tapped into the anxiety of the time. Just ahead of World War II, much of the world was nearly — or already — at war when the program aired. 

“The War of the Worlds” was the 17th episode of the CBS Radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air, which was broadcast at 8 pm ET on Sunday, October 30, 1938.

directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds (1898).

It was performed and broadcast live as a Halloween episode at 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 30, 1938, over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. The episode became famous for allegedly causing panic among its listening audience, though the scale of that panic is disputed, as the program had relatively few listeners

early exampke of hybrid radio film. (stephen neale)

suspending disbelief

(stanley cohen) folk devil& ‘moral panics ‘

 In this instance, the Language of Radio is used creatively to structure a text that could be taken as fact, but is clearly fiction. 

j.mcdougall: The conventions of news reports were adapted for dramatic realism so for the audience to suspend disbelief and engage in the plot as though it was subject to radio journalism