Question

the radio broadcast war of the worlds was told in present tense. how did this affect the way that people reacted to it

Answer 1

The present tense made it seem as if the events narrated were taking place at that very moment. It helped making the audience believe it was real news they were listening to.

Step-by-step explanation:

In 1938, future filmmaker Orson Welles broadcasted a special Halloween episode on radio featuring an adaptation of the novel War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells. The novel narrates a fictional invasion on Earth by Martians.

Even though it was clearly stated at the beginning of the program that he was reading from the novel, it is said that many listeners truly thought the music program on the radio was being interrupted to provide real-time news. Thus, it was in the form of news bulletins and in the present tense that Welles described explosions on Mars, the falling of a strange object on Earth and, consequently, an invasion by Martians, which caused the listeners to panic. It is now known that listeners' reaction was exaggerated over the years. There were indeed those who panicked, but not a great number of people.

Answer 2

It was told in the present tense to give an illusion of realism. This affected the reaction of some people by making them believe that it was truly happening.

Step-by-step explanation:

There were two significant changes between the novel and radio adaptation. One was the change of place on which the story took place, in the novel the action was in England while in the Welles´s broadcast happened on United States soil.

The other change, that is about the question asked, was the change of the tense in which the story was told. For the novel, H.G. Wells used the past tense to told a fictional story that had already happened. But in the radio version the tense used was present to be more realistic and persuade the audience that the action was happening on that same time.

I hope this answer helps you.