The infamous 1938 broadcast of HG Wells's The War of the Worlds is often portrayed as causing widespread panic among listeners who mistook it for a news bulletin. However, recent analyses suggest that this narrative is largely exaggerated. Surveys indicated that only around 2% of the audience claimed to have reacted with fear or confusion. Additionally, contemporary issues with misinformation are nuanced, as credible news sites gained significantly more traffic during the early Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting that trustworthy information can often prevail over dubious sources in audience attention.
Despite the widespread belief that the 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds caused mass panic, only 2% of listeners reported reacting in such a way. Most understood it was fiction.
Misinformation today may seem pervasive, but reliable news sources attracted significantly more attention during the early Covid-19 pandemic, overshadowing untrustworthy sites by a large margin.
The narrative that The War of the Worlds created widespread fear is a misinterpretation; listener accounts indicated awareness of the fictional nature of the broadcast.
Amidst discussions of rampant misinformation, the historical context of audience reactions to The War of the Worlds serves as a reminder that fear may often be overstated.
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