America Under Attack 1: The War of the Worlds, Orson Welles, and 'Media Sense'

Abstract

This article re-examines Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast. Welles' ingenious use of radio is attributed to his innate "media sense" - an ability to understand the medium he worked with in order to push it to its artistic limits. Responses to the program on the part of print media and academe are examined along with more scholarly media sense of Marshall McLuhan, who comments on the so-called Panic Broadcast in Understanding Media. This paper features an on-line auditory component ( www.cjc-online.ca ) that includes excerpts from the author's 1998 radio documentary on The War of the Worlds for ABC (Australia).