Radio, Propaganda, and The War of the Worlds

“In Russia radio propaganda is used to build up Communism; the Nazi propaganda minister, Goebbels, uses it obliquely to spread the doctrines of Hitler and says that ‘Some day the radio will be the spiritual daily bread of the whole German nation.’ In the United States most…propaganda is devoted to the selling of merchandise.”

--Hadley Cantril and Gordon W. Allport, The Psychology of Radio (1935)

Arriving in the U.S. in the 1930s, many Central European émigrés and refugees had witnessed firsthand the use of Nazi propaganda and remained attentive to the incitement of terror through mass media. Dozens of these new immigrants went on to facilitate research connected to American commercial interests, focusing on the radio and its impact on the listener, the consumer, and the soundscape of the American household.

In this illuminated lecture, Professor Paul Lerner discusses Orson Welles' famous 1938 radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" vis-à-vis analysis from Austrian Jewish media researcher (and later advertising exec) Herta Herzog, who studied audience reactions to the broadcast and argued that the tensions of the time – the rise of fascist movements, the growing likelihood of war – agitated listeners and predisposed them to believe the fabricated threat from the skies, despite Welles’ assurances that the broadcast was a hoax.

Throughout the lecture, actors from theatre dybbuk perform excerpts from radio broadcasts and other sources, bringing the talk vividly to life.