Quick notes:

• 1930s
• Early example of a hybrid radio form
• It adapts the H.G. Wells story using news and documentary conventions
• Broadcast and initial response to it has a historical significance
  • example of the mass media apparently having a direct effect on an audience’s behaviour
• Academic research was put into the broadcast
  • Provided some of the early media audience research
  • Findings are extremely influential in the media, advertising and political campaigning
• timestamp 39:30 the audio goes silent. this is unusual in radio, trying to add to the eeriness and trying to make the story more believable?

WHAT IS IT?

• A radio play about Martians invading New Jersey.
• It fooled people

MEDIA INSTITUTIONS:

• Broadcasted by Colombia Broadcasting Company
  • an institution still in existence
• Radio broadcasting was a direct competition to newspapers
• The broadcast= good example of institutions branching out to attract new audiences
• The broadcast is a good example to consider the effect of individual producers on media industries [the work of Orson Welles]

REGULATION

• Radio broadcasting was regulated by the Federal Communications Commission
  • It investigated the broadcast to see if it had broken any laws

AUDIENCES:

• External factors that influence audience response:

HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS:

MEDIA LANGUAGE: