THEROISTS:
LASSWELL- HYPODERMIC NEEDLE THEORY
- Suggests media texts can have a powerful and immediate effect on the passive audience
- Because it’s in the 1930s, this radio [and newspapers] were the only source of news information, so they took this information in via passive consumption and that is what they thought and believed as there was no evidence to prove it wrong.
- War of the worlds ‘terrified’ its audience
Stuart Hall encode decode theory
- audience in 1930 had nothing to verify news with
- audience decoded the message in a different way it was encoded
- the broadcast was interrupted every so often with news, leading the audience to believe the story as they don’t know what was the story and what was real news
new technologies
GERBNER CULTIVATION THEORY
- Heavy users of tv become more susceptible to its messages, especially if it resonates with the viewer
- A veteran says: “The radio was too ‘realistic’ for comfort”
LAZAFELD 2 STEP FLOW MODEL
- The New York times rushed to talk about the radio broadcast, leading to a reliable platform/source of information people can use to realise the story wasn’t real
- this allowed several people to not be terrorised by the radio play