British individuals who regularly watch television soap operas were found to have lower levels of stress and were better at resolving their personal problems than those who didn't. Seeing ostensibly ordinary families with exaggerated numbers of problems, who nonetheless resolve them and keep on going, helps individuals have confidence in their own personal problem resolution. In this instance media exaggeration and distortion, which Weimann deplores, is a positive asset. Weimann retells the old anecdote concerning the 'War of the Worlds' radio series sparking panics in 1930s America. He uses it as an example of the power of the media, whereas I would take the story to signify the opposite.
People are far too sophisticated to be caught out in the way that Middle America was then.
They are cognisant with the conventions of the medium and can 'read' it in far more insightful ways than Weimann gives them credit for. E-mail, mobile phones, the Internet, all put power in the hands of users rather than content creators. Like many cultural theorists Weimann at once denigrates the media and also raises it to a position of supreme importance. People aren't dopes. They draw on many different sources of experience and can tell if media reality differs from their own.