Some propaganda history: 
On October 30, 1938, CBS broadcast Orson Welles’ adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “War of The Worlds.” It was structured as a real-time breaking news bulletin, reporting a terrifying Martian invasion in northern New Jersey complete with elaborate sound effects.
Many listeners believed the broadcast was real. People rushed from their homes, and panicked calls flooded newspaper switchboards. A caller from Pittsburgh claimed that he had barely prevented his wife from taking her own life by swallowing poison.
Since then, historians have cast doubt on the size of the panic. But there *was* a panic, and it dominated the headlines for a week.
After the broadcast there was a huge national debate about who was to blame for the panic. Was it Welles, for creating the deceptive show? CBS, for broadcasting it? Or the listeners for falling for it? Most people blamed the listeners, according to the historian David Goodman.
In newspapers and magazines there was an explosion of contempt for listeners who fell for the broadcast. They were “dial-twiddlers who dart all over the kilocycles like water-bugs," a "trifle retarded mentally."
The columnist Dorothy Thompson offered some of the harshest criticism: Orson Welles and his crew, she wrote, “have shown up the incredible stupidity, lack of nerve and ignorance of thousands. They have proved how easy it is to start a mass delusion."
Goodman argues the rush to blame listeners reflected two big anxieties among Progressives at the time. One was about the wave of propaganda thought to be washing over the United States, both domestic propaganda of demagogues like Fr. Coughlin and fascist propaganda from Germany.
In response, a movement of “propaganda critics” formed to teach people to resist propaganda. They offered tips on how to recognize manipulative techniques. Listening responsibly thus became a “civic duty”. Those duped by the broadcast were bad listeners, a danger to the country.
Anxiety about the general level of intelligence of the average American also fueled the contempt for listeners. During World War I, intelligence tests carried out on soldiers had “revealed” that the average intelligence of an American male was around 13.08 years.
There was a concern that radio was making people even dumber, thanks to its "moronish" content and the passivity with which people listened. The panic confirmed the belief that a large number of Americans were simply idiots, brainwashed by the radio.
In Goodman’s telling, the focus on intelligence and correct listening diverted the discussion from the responsibility of broadcasters or the government to the responsibility of the individual listener.
What might have been an opportunity to discuss the dangers of a concentration of media power, or the role of government in protecting the public interest, became instead an opportunity for Progressive thought leaders to mock dumb yokels.
Goodman writes: “It was a distressingly undemocratic moment, in which the civic… values of tolerance and empathy were quite forgotten in an excess of zeal about rationality, intelligence, and national security”.
Something to keep in mind as we all have a good laugh at this random Florida woman who fell for Russian propaganda.
(P.S. I wrote a lot more about the parallels between the early history of radio and current debates around social media here newyorker.com/magazine/2017/…)
