Renton said:
We just like to think we're more sophisticated than earlier generations. Could we fall for another Wellesian War of the Worlds hoax? Under the right circumstances, and Tom Cruise notwithstanding, I think so.
The difficulty in triggering another Wellesian WotW panic (it wasn't a hoax - that's a deliberate deception), would be the peculiar circumstances of the broadcast. Radio was a fairly new thing on the market place and there hadn't really been anything like it previously, where news and entertainment could simultainiously reach very large groups of people in essentially real time. The rise of telephone networks, also let the panic spread more widely since the information could be spread over an area much more quickly.
While radio was used for entertainment, there had been nothing like the WotW broadcast before, in which a fantastic story had attempted to seem realistic. It was structured as a series of "Special News" reports that broke into a typical musical entertainment program, eventually replacing the musical program entirely. While it was made clear at the start of the program that it was simply a radio play, many listeners didn't tune in until after the program had started. There was another more popular program that was on at the same time, but they put on a bad singer who wasn't very popular. So it became one of the first major examples of channel surfing as people decided to go check out what else was on and then stumbled across this riveting tale of a major disaster unfolding.
There also wasn't the mental filter between news and entertainment programing that people take for granted today. There's a lot more little cues that people use today to help determine if a program is fiction or news today, the time of the programing, the channel, if it's on multiple sources, who's involved actors or news personalities, are there being comercials broadcast, etc... All of these sorts of clues were either non-existant or blurry at best.
People had far fewer sources of news back then and only Radio was anything like a real time information source. News sources were also taken much more at their word. People simply weren't as suspicious or distrustful of information reported on the radio, especially if it was a "Special Report". In a sense it was also much more plausible that something like an alien invasion could take place, knowledge of the planets and their conditions was pretty limited among the population and what was "known" and what was "possible" had changed drasically in people's lifetime. It wasn't that long before the broadcast that it was "impossible" for a man to fly.
Finally, Orson Wells was really good at what he did. He had a great radio voice and a terrific imagination.
Panics like this happened before, only it generally took the form of a rumor and a mob forming. Information just didn't spread quicly enough to trigger it over an area. They've happened since, only the form has changed. The scare of the "cancer causing" ability of a pestcide Alar in the late eighties is a more recent example. Sales of Apples and Cider plummited overnight because people were told it could cause "cancer". That you would have had to drink thousands of gallons a year to increase your risk 5% just didn't get out to people.
Mad Cow disease is another even more recent example. There are something like 130 people who MAY have contracted the disease from eating beef. It is not definitely estabilshed that they did in fact contract it through eating meat. Though it is the most likely vector for them having contracted it. So despite the fact that more people die in a week from food poisoning than that, mad cow disease has a scary name "MAD COW DISEASE". It has horrible consequences and kills you in a particularly nasty way. Plus the media can show scary footage of cows stumbling and x-rays of cow brains with lots of holes in them.
People panic over things they are afraid of, especially if it involves things they don't understand.
