Publication Date

2020

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Sharp, Shane

Degree Name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of Sociology

Abstract

This thesis compares the consumption of the three different types of media: reality, live action fictional, and animated fictional, and the belief in the different types of supernatural and paranormal belief. The various phenomena addressed in this thesis were angels, demons, ghosts, psychics, aliens/UFOS, zombies, and Bigfoot. Models were created to test the belief level of each specific phenomena type against each of the three types of media, if enough media examples existed of each phenomena type. This type of analysis was used so that each media could be considered separately and then compared to each other. The hypotheses were based on the idea that the consumption would be positively correlated with the belief in each type and that the more realistic the media type, the larger the correlation. The results showed that for most of the phenomena types, there was a trend of a larger B for the more realistic than the less realistic types and many of the correlations were found to be statistically significant.

Extent

54 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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