How does War of the Worlds radio broadcast relate to history?

In the 1930s, war was on the horizon. The US had not yet entered what would be the Second World War, but Americans were concerned at the rising threat of Adolf Hitler in Europe. Hitler frequently made use of the mass media of his day-- mainly radio and film-- to spread his message and promote Nazi propaganda. American scholars and psychologists were concerned that the techniques he was using could be imitated by others, maybe even someone in the United States. There had been few studies of Mass Communication and media effects; this was because radio and movies-- or talking pictures, as they were then called-- were relatively new. Radio began to gain popularity in the period from 1920-1922, while silent movies were not replaced by talking pictures until the late 1920s. There seemed to be no urgency to study the effects of the media on the audience... until the rise of Hitler, and until another event-- the late October 1938 radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds."

Today, we know that much of what was written about the "War of the Worlds" broadcast was either a myth, inaccurately reported, or exaggerated. But it is a fact that many listeners who tuned into the Orson Welles' radio adaptation of an H.G. Wells Science Fiction story took it seriously. They thought the US was in fact being invaded by Martians. Some people panicked, some ran from their homes screaming in fear (a lot fewer people than were reported at the time, but still, some people were in fact fooled by how realistic the radio play sounded). This reinforced for a number of American scholars, psychologists, sociologists, and journalists that radio could persuade large numbers of people.

By the late 1930s, theories about the dangerous influence of movies and radio were being spread; radio took much of the criticism, since the Orson Welles broadcast was what had terrified so many people; there were even some newspapers calling for radio to be censored so that the public would never be fooled again (it should be noted that newspapers saw radio as competition for advertising dollars, and some of the anti-radio editorials were motivated more by a desire to see radio do poorly than by a desire to protect the public from misinformation). Of course, there was no proof that radio plays were dangerous-- many listeners were simply entertained and realized it was a Halloween stunt. But for some critics, radio (and to a lesser degree movies) needed to have limitations on it, so that some Hitler-figure couldn't use it to mislead the public. In the end, there was some censorship, but it was because of World War II, rather than because of the Orson Welles broadcast. However, as a result of the audience reaction to "War of the Worlds," more universities began studying the effects of the mass media. Some of the theories they came up with were not very accurate, but even today, whenever there is a problem in society, some people immediately want to blame it on the media, just as we saw in 1938.