War of the Worlds, the

On October 30, 1938, between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., CBS broadcast the radio play The War of the Worlds. The script by Howard Koch was based on the novel of the same name by H. G. Wells, written in 1897; the director of the radio play was the then unknown Orson Welles. The broadcast became a milestone in media history, causing the emergence of many myths. At the same time, it is also a milestone of media research because the discourse in communication science constantly refers to it.

The radio play is about an invasion of the planet Earth by Martians. The first part of about 40 minutes depicts the futile fight of resistance against the invaders. In the second part of about 20 minutes, a survivor describes how he managed to escape and how he discovers that the invaders have died due to terrestrial bacteria.

The radio play stands out because of its numerous and, for 1938, novel plot devices which create an impression of authenticity. It is structured in such a way that elements of different genres (reportage, news, press conference, interview, etc.) are combined in a dramatic manner, clouding the fictive character of the production. Only three times—in the beginning, middle, and end—is the program clearly identified as a radio play. In a resourceful manner it shows the possibilities of the new medium of radio, which is to create a feeling of direct presence.

It is a stroke of luck for communication science that the Princeton Radio Research Project analyzed listeners' reactions to the broadcast. That is why we reliably know about some of the events that took place after the broadcast and do not have to refer to the lurid recounts by the press, which exaggerated the individual reactions to a mass panic—a distortion which to this day has obstinately stayed in the collective memory. As a psychologist, Cantril was interested in the variance of the reactions to the radio play and how they can be explained. On the basis of different data sources, the study shows that about 6 million people listened to the whole program or parts of it. The lynchpin of the reception was the estimate of authenticity of the program by listeners. Twenty-eight percent of the listeners thought the program authentic. Of these, 70% were scared; the rest described themselves after the event as calm. Thus, about 1.2 million were excited. In interviews, the various reactions to the experiences became obvious. One group was naive. Its members did not doubt the authenticity of the broadcast but responded in different ways: Some were paralyzed by fear, some tried to flee, and so on. In contrast, the uncertain tried to get a picture of the character of the program through different checks. This in turn led to different reactions. The research produced a complex network of different types of perception and action. The differences cannot alone be explained by the broadcast's high quality and the cultural unfamiliarity with the medium of radio. This would have affected all the recipients just as would the overall historical context (the imminent perils of war, economic situation, etc.). According to the results of the study, the following factors are of greater

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