Don't panic!

Interesting to note thaat a false declaration that the State of Connecticut was being evacuated led to ... absolutely no panic whatsoever. It seems that the message was sent erroneously during what was supposed to be a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Of course this gets me to thinking about that greatest example of a media-inspired panic: Orson Welles' 1938 Mercury Theater of the Air broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" - where thousands of people thought that a real Martian invasion of the Earth was underway! (Here's the contemporary coverage from the New York Times of Monday, Oct 31, 1938.) Immediately after the broadcast, Henry Cantril, a Princeton University psychologist, organized a study into the effects of the broadcast on listeners. This study is oft-cited in the Communication field as it helped initiate a shift in media-related research away from powerful effects toward weak or minimal effects. And if this week's Connecticut broadcast is anything to go by, the effects of a single broadcast are very weak indeed (which is of course why you need to focus on multiple impressions of a message, agenda-setting, long-term influences, environmental, psychological, sociological, cultural factors ... I could go on, but I'll stop now.) :-)

Note, btw, that the original 1938 broadcast is available on the web, at http://www.earthstation1.com/wotw.html. Makes for interesting listening.