• A famous episode due to the fact is ensued panic on those who listened, them thinking there was an actual Martian invasion of Earth taking place.
• The program is a simulation of a “live event” where it plays bulletins as if it were a real radio being interrupted by an emergency broadcast.
• “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 October 30, 1938, making this a Halloween special.
• The scare was intended with the Narrator and Director “Orson Welles ” said  “and would be broadcast in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real event taking place at that time, rather than a mere radio play”
• Out of an estimated 6 million listeners, 1.7 million believed the story and 1.2 million got disturbed/scared. Even thought 30 minutes through the show, an announcement was made saying it was just a story.

Linked Theories

Gerbners idea that what people listen or watch, slowly becomes what they actually think or believe. Which in this case is the people who were scared or frightened, not listening to the announcement that it was fake and paying attention to the start/finish and name of the broadcast being The Mercury Theatre on the Air.

Halls idea is the multiple types of audience that listen to the war of the worlds. Each with their own set of reactions. Firstly, Dominant, or Preferred Reading – how the producer wants the audience to view the media text. The creator of war of the worlds wanted the audience to understand and be entertained by a documentery/story piece.

Oppositional Reading – when the audience rejects the preferred reading, and creates their own meaning for the text. In this case it would be people running out of their houses with their families.

Negotiated Reading – a compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings, where the audience accepts parts of the producer’s views, but has their own views on parts as well. In this example it would be people getting frightened of the piece and turning it off.

Lasswells 5 forms of communication.
who said it: Columbia Broadcasting Company
what was said: A story based on the idea Martians were arriving on earth.
in which channel it was said: Radio
to who it was said: A radio audience of 12 million people
what effect it had when it was said: 6 Million scared or frightened, with 1.2 million going to the lengths of running out with their families in fear.

Fake news

Fake news started and was made consistently since 1755, so in this case it was not an abnormal thing to be broadcasted or seen.