ABSTRACT
There are two studies that were conducted by Paul Felix Lazarsfeld's colleagues on the effects of radio broadcasting that are worth noting in reference to Lazarsfeld's life work because they offer important insight into the work of the radio research teams Lazarsfeld headed at Princeton and then Columbia. The first study was a socio-psychological exploration of the public panic generated by Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds. The second was an analysis of a successful radio campaign broadcast to get the public to buy war bonds. A book based on this study was published in 1946, shortly after the war, and was titled Mass Persuasion. The research was designed with the basic idea that the effect of mass persuasion should be studied from the perspective of the content of what was being communicated – propaganda – and from the perspective of the public listening to this content.
