War of The Worlds was a book originally published by author H.G Wells in 1898. War of The Worlds was broadcast on the radio on October 30th, 1938; this was between both WW1 and WW2. The 1930’s was a decade full of unfortunate events as people across the world were still recovering from WW1, the Great Depression and Wall Street’s crash. In addition, across the globe dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were gaining power. The Nazi party in Germany began to escalate in number and force, followed by its’ persecution of Jewish people and others considered ‘undesirables’. A second world war was imminent, bringing with it an air of uncertainty and negativity. In contrast, the 1930’s and 1940’s brought the ‘Golden Age’ of radio to the masses, whereby radio was the most used media platform in households across the world. 

The War of The Worlds was broadcast in America by CBS radio, as part of The Mercury Theatre’s ‘On the Air’ series. Roughly, 80% of households in the US owned a radio at this specific time. The drama performance of War of The Worlds was adapted to sound like a present day, live broadcast. It had no breaks and only had one announcement at the beginning of the broadcast to warn listeners that it was a play and not a real news broadcast. The broadcast is an early example of a hybrid-genre as it mixes conventions from H.G Wells’ science-fiction story together with a News / Documentary type broadcast.  Welles used simulated on-the-scene radio reports about aliens advancing on New York City linking to the story. Repetition of this technique throughout the performance links to Stuart Hall’s Cultivation Theory where over time a story becomes more believable.

The broadcast demonstrates how media institutions manufacture consent, linking with the ideas of Noam Chomsky, ‘Ownership, Advertising, The Media Elite, Flak and The Common Enemy’ as with the broadcast of War of the Worlds by Orson Welles. Therefore, this creates a presence on how the media dominates, and is dominated by power. By exposing how people react with panic if the “news” provides the audience with information about the significance of an event, Orson Welles exposed how the media can spread misinformation i.e. ‘Fake News’. The War of the Worlds broadcast is also considered an early form of ‘fake news’ as it supposedly had some members of the American public believe that there had been an alien invasion on earth. An example of this is the Hypodermic needle model, which is a communication theory that suggests mixed media messages are injected directly into the brains of audiences. It comes from a fear of mass media, and provides the media with much more power than it can contain within a democracy, which causes mass shock.

At the time of the broadcast American citizens will have been very on edge considering the events happening in the world around them due to the anticipation of a second world war combined with the fact that it was Halloween. The broadcast became famous for supposedly causing mass panic among its listeners however, many doubt the scale of panic that was claimed to have been made, as the radio channel had relatively few listeners. In reality, it was the speculations that newspapers portrayed that caused mass hysteria.

The War Of The Worlds is a historically significant media product as it was an early idea of how the media can persuade and effect peoples thoughts and views on the world around them and can influence a person’s thoughts and feelings towards a specific thing whether it be political or an opinion on a book. We still see this today where news is more accessible through improved technology and the worldwide web. Even though people are more aware of the role the media plays, people are still susceptible to believing it.