War of the worlds

After reading page 62 of the text and listening to Orsen Welles’s radio interpretation of War of the Worlds, I can understand that the research regarding the mass panics in 1938 were flawed. The broadcast was fun to listen to but even if people had missed the first disclaimer, one would have had to completely zone out during the music and disclaimer breaks for them to not hear the disclaimers.

The radio broadcast may have been the reason that many people today assumed that there was a mass panic on that night in 1938. The broadcast said that chaos was coming and that people would die, so it is right to assume that a lot of people may have taken it too seriously. The idea of “group thought” comes to mind when hearing of situations such as this; if a lot of people believe that something is true, than it is often perceived to be true, even if it isn’t. Just because a lot of people may have misinterpreted the show and thought it was real doesn’t mean they decided to kill themselves over it.

Also, a lot of people believed that the radio broadcast had caused mass panic so it stuck that way for many years. People just assumed that those who listened panicked over the broadcast and no one questioned it. When listening to the broadcast, one has to wonder if the people already knew Orsen Welles than, why did few people recognize his voice. He did have a daily show that many must have listened to and recognized him for, but regardless people didn’t think twice about aliens attacking the earth. The show followed the basic news structure except for the multiple disclaimers warning that the show was just that, a show.