Date of Award

8-7-2018

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Moving Image Studies

First Advisor

Sharon Shahaf

Second Advisor

Greg Smith

Third Advisor

Ethan Tussey

Fourth Advisor

Amanda Ann Klein

Abstract

Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium updates and expands cycle theory through an examination of ghost hunting films and television shows in the 21st Century across media boundaries. Through a comprehensive media industries framework that incorporates industrial, textual, and cultural analysis, the study examines how similar generic texts can best be understood if examined in terms of production cycles. This is especially true in the modern conglomerate-owned media environment which emphasizes ongoing production and exploitation of popular formulas in different media as a means of maximizing profits and minimizing costs across a corporation’s vast subsidiaries, and which in turn affects the spheres of independent productions and fandom. Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium provides the historical contexts for the development of ghost hunting shows and found footage horror films in their respective media, and then puts them into direct conversation with one another as industrial and cultural products using industrial, textual, and discourse analysis. By bringing cycle studies into discussion with media industries studies, the dissertation argues, media historians can make more focused, cogent arguments about the relationships between generic texts across traditional medium-specific fields of scholarship.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/12505646

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