David Dowling - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by David Dowling

Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media

Globally daily news podcasts have exponentially grown in popularity. To build on the increased in... more Globally daily news podcasts have exponentially grown in popularity. To build on the increased interest in this podcast format, this study examines three distinct programmes in this genre. The focus of our research specifically highlights the significant news events during the summer of 2020: the killing of George Floyd, and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a set of genre conventions adapted and expanded from previous podcast and radio news scholarship, this research analyses the impact podcasting has on daily audio news production. Our findings indicate the podcast host’s empathy and intimacy, coalesced into powerful, immersive deep dive discussions. Those kinds of conversations have strongly influenced and transformed daily news production, while still maintaining journalistic ethics and aesthetics.

Media and Communication

Whereas personal expression has become a core practice of journalism whose merits can include gre... more Whereas personal expression has become a core practice of journalism whose merits can include greater attention to context and interpretative analysis, these freedoms from the constraints of traditional broadcast conventions can pose serious risks, including the ideological hijacking of journalism by partisan actors. In popular right-wing podcasts, such as those hosted by Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino, the element of opinion amplifies the tendency of the podcast medium to relegate news to a secondary concern behind the emotional impact. Not only do podcasters like Shapiro and Bongino contribute to a fractured media environment of hyper-partisan news and commentary, but they also utilize social media platforms and transmedia networks to undermine traditional journalism and replace it with an alternative conservative media ecosystem—a multiplatform, full-service clearinghouse of news and commentary afforded by the publishing capabilities of the internet and the distribution algorithms o...

Immersive Longform Storytelling, 2019

Handbook of American Romanticism, 2021

Journal of Magazine Media, 2020

Immersive Journalism as Storytelling, 2021

The debut of Bear 71 at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 established a major milestone in the e... more The debut of Bear 71 at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 established a major milestone in the evolution of interactive cinema. Five years later, the film's reformatting and re-release in 2017 as a virtual reality (VR) experience viewed through headmounted displays (HMDs) signaled the future of immersive journalism (Jardine 2017). In it, the viewer tracks the movement and behavior of a female grizzly bear in Canada's Banff National Park, which provides the setting for this poignant piece revealing the human impact on wildlife. The VR edition enabled the largescale setting of the wilderness to take on the powerful intimacy of an immersive news experience of the sort showcased in Nonny de la Peña's pioneering Hunger in L.A., which also debuted at Sundance in 2012. As with Bear 71, Hunger in L.A. offered a moving human encounter rather than "cold facts and figures", in its case "by taking a small scale drama and turning it into an emotional confrontation with the everyday reality of hunger in one of the richest countries in the world" (van der Haak 2014). Despite being only seven minutes in length, the work left a deep impression on audiences. "Viewers of the piece tried to touch the nonexistent characters and many cried at the conclusion", according to de la Peña (as quoted in van der Haak 2014). Roughly three times the length, Bear 71's 2017 VR edition expanded the template for the virtual news experience into a more distinctly cinematic, longform mode of storytelling, extending the reach of the medium's already considerable empathic powers. This chapter examines interactive documentary's evolution since 2012, particularly visible in the emergence of VR/ 360 journalism. 360-degree video (in spherical rather than flat formatting) viewed through the "magic window" on mobile devices or with HMDs in the more fully immersive VR format have propelled documentary journalism to new technological and narrative heights, achievements attained in part through alternative brand economies, industrial logics and marketing strategies. News organizations, researchers, and tech companies have begun to

Immersive Longform Storytelling, 2019

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2021

Interactive documentary (i-docs), an innovative hybrid form at the intersection of film, journali... more Interactive documentary (i-docs), an innovative hybrid form at the intersection of film, journalism, and digital games, has matured beyond its first wave of experimentation, gaining distinction among the most highly evolved immersive media of the twenty-first century. The latest generation of i-docs is currently winning accolades at both major film festivals and game design summits. This study charts the evolutionary trajectory of North America’s most recent and influential wave of i-docs in works mostly appearing since 2015. It culturally situates i-docs as immersive media that extend experimentation with narrative journalism into the realm of fine art and social activism. Building on the foundation of activist, highly empathic news experiences established in the early 2010s, the most recent advances in i-docs range from live action VR to animated digital games. Such works include the Canadian National Film Board’s 2018 AR (augmented reality) experience East of the Rockies, Occupie...

Immersive Longform Storytelling, 2019

The Routledge Companion to American Literary Journalism, 2019

Immersive Longform Storytelling, 2019

Immersive Longform Storytelling, 2019

Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media

Globally daily news podcasts have exponentially grown in popularity. To build on the increased in... more Globally daily news podcasts have exponentially grown in popularity. To build on the increased interest in this podcast format, this study examines three distinct programmes in this genre. The focus of our research specifically highlights the significant news events during the summer of 2020: the killing of George Floyd, and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a set of genre conventions adapted and expanded from previous podcast and radio news scholarship, this research analyses the impact podcasting has on daily audio news production. Our findings indicate the podcast host’s empathy and intimacy, coalesced into powerful, immersive deep dive discussions. Those kinds of conversations have strongly influenced and transformed daily news production, while still maintaining journalistic ethics and aesthetics.

Media and Communication

Whereas personal expression has become a core practice of journalism whose merits can include gre... more Whereas personal expression has become a core practice of journalism whose merits can include greater attention to context and interpretative analysis, these freedoms from the constraints of traditional broadcast conventions can pose serious risks, including the ideological hijacking of journalism by partisan actors. In popular right-wing podcasts, such as those hosted by Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino, the element of opinion amplifies the tendency of the podcast medium to relegate news to a secondary concern behind the emotional impact. Not only do podcasters like Shapiro and Bongino contribute to a fractured media environment of hyper-partisan news and commentary, but they also utilize social media platforms and transmedia networks to undermine traditional journalism and replace it with an alternative conservative media ecosystem—a multiplatform, full-service clearinghouse of news and commentary afforded by the publishing capabilities of the internet and the distribution algorithms o...

Immersive Longform Storytelling, 2019

Handbook of American Romanticism, 2021

Journal of Magazine Media, 2020

Immersive Journalism as Storytelling, 2021

The debut of Bear 71 at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 established a major milestone in the e... more The debut of Bear 71 at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 established a major milestone in the evolution of interactive cinema. Five years later, the film's reformatting and re-release in 2017 as a virtual reality (VR) experience viewed through headmounted displays (HMDs) signaled the future of immersive journalism (Jardine 2017). In it, the viewer tracks the movement and behavior of a female grizzly bear in Canada's Banff National Park, which provides the setting for this poignant piece revealing the human impact on wildlife. The VR edition enabled the largescale setting of the wilderness to take on the powerful intimacy of an immersive news experience of the sort showcased in Nonny de la Peña's pioneering Hunger in L.A., which also debuted at Sundance in 2012. As with Bear 71, Hunger in L.A. offered a moving human encounter rather than "cold facts and figures", in its case "by taking a small scale drama and turning it into an emotional confrontation with the everyday reality of hunger in one of the richest countries in the world" (van der Haak 2014). Despite being only seven minutes in length, the work left a deep impression on audiences. "Viewers of the piece tried to touch the nonexistent characters and many cried at the conclusion", according to de la Peña (as quoted in van der Haak 2014). Roughly three times the length, Bear 71's 2017 VR edition expanded the template for the virtual news experience into a more distinctly cinematic, longform mode of storytelling, extending the reach of the medium's already considerable empathic powers. This chapter examines interactive documentary's evolution since 2012, particularly visible in the emergence of VR/ 360 journalism. 360-degree video (in spherical rather than flat formatting) viewed through the "magic window" on mobile devices or with HMDs in the more fully immersive VR format have propelled documentary journalism to new technological and narrative heights, achievements attained in part through alternative brand economies, industrial logics and marketing strategies. News organizations, researchers, and tech companies have begun to

Immersive Longform Storytelling, 2019

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2021

Interactive documentary (i-docs), an innovative hybrid form at the intersection of film, journali... more Interactive documentary (i-docs), an innovative hybrid form at the intersection of film, journalism, and digital games, has matured beyond its first wave of experimentation, gaining distinction among the most highly evolved immersive media of the twenty-first century. The latest generation of i-docs is currently winning accolades at both major film festivals and game design summits. This study charts the evolutionary trajectory of North America’s most recent and influential wave of i-docs in works mostly appearing since 2015. It culturally situates i-docs as immersive media that extend experimentation with narrative journalism into the realm of fine art and social activism. Building on the foundation of activist, highly empathic news experiences established in the early 2010s, the most recent advances in i-docs range from live action VR to animated digital games. Such works include the Canadian National Film Board’s 2018 AR (augmented reality) experience East of the Rockies, Occupie...

Immersive Longform Storytelling, 2019

The Routledge Companion to American Literary Journalism, 2019

Immersive Longform Storytelling, 2019

Immersive Longform Storytelling, 2019