Welcome to Media in Minutes' where I talk you through important concepts in media and communication. Today we're talking about the Hypodermic Needle Theory which was one of the earliest ways of thinking about how the mass media influences audiences. It was developed in the 1920s and 1930s after researchers observed the effect of propaganda during World War I and events like the Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds' broadcast. The hypodermic needle theory is a linear communication theory which suggests that media messages are injected directly into the brains of a passive audience. It suggests that we're all the same and we all respond to media messages in the same way. This way of thinking about communication and media influences is no longer really accepted. In the 1930s many researchers realized the limitations of this idea and some dispute with early media theorists gave the idea any serious attention at all. Nevertheless, the Hypodermic Needle Theory continues to influence the way we talk about the media. People believe that the mass media has a powerful effect. Parents worry about the influence of television in violent video games. News outlets run headlines like 'Is Google making a stupid?' and 'Grand Theft Auto led teen to kill.' So how did this way of thinking about the mass media develop? Back in 1927, Harold Lasswell an American political scientist and communication theorist published a book called 'Propaganda Technique in the World War' Writing about the effect of Allied propaganda during World War I, Lasswell wrote: "From a propaganda point-of-view it was matchless performance for Wilson brewed the subtle poison which industrious men injected into the veins of a staggering people until the smashing powers of the Allied armies knocked them into submission." The Payne Fund Studies which were conducted between 1929 and 1932 and looked at the effect movies have on children also contributed to this idea that the mass media has a powerful and direct influence on the audiences. Although these studies have been criticized for the lack of scientific rigour, they were really one of the first and most comprehensive examinations of how the media works Writing about the influence of movies the project chairman W.W Charters wrote that they have the potential to profoundly affect the way children behave. Even in the 1930s, however, researches were starting to realize that this way of thinking about media influence was kind of inadequate. Then, in 1938 Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre broadcast a dramatisation of HG Wells' 'War of the Worlds.' Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight of the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars. The battle which took place tonight at Grovers Mill has ended in one of the most startling military defeats ever suffered by an army in modern times; seven thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns pitted against a single fighting machine of the invaders from Mars. One hundred and twenty known survivors. The rest strewn over the battle area from Grovers Mill to Plainsboro crushed and trampled to death under the metal feet of the monster, or burned to cinders by its heat ray. The program, which was presented in the format of a news bulletin, caused some listeners to believe that the Earth was being invited by martians. The New York Times claimed that thousands of people were gripped by mass hysteria. While thousands of people may have been panic-stricken, they were only a small proportion of the six million people who enjoy a quiet night around the radio. On the surface, events like they seem to suggest that the media can have a powerful influence on audiences. Nevertheless, The Hypodermic Needle Theory is kind of inadequate to describe the process of communication immediate influence It just doesn't work.