Experiences and Preferences of Immersive Journalism: Comparison of Current and Future Media Forms (original) (raw)

2019, Future of Journalism 2019

From the written word to televised news, the progression of journalism has seen many different forms. Now, with the increasingly mainstream use of Virtual Reality (VR), journalists are embracing yet another news delivery form; although, the execution of the experiences are still in infancy and often experimental at best (Shin & Biocca, 2017; Sirkkunen, 2016). Just as journalists carefully choose each word as they craft an article, such care must also be taken when creating VR experiences, and perhaps even more so due to its immersive qualities. However, the equation for a top-notch experience is not so simple; contributing factors range from pragmatic issues such as video quality and hardware abilities to more hedonic qualities like the effectiveness of storytelling and emotional impact (Sundar, Kang, & Oprean, 2017). Further, there is now the question of where VR fits into the news consumption dynamic: how and when do users prefer to view immersive content? In this study (N=30), we investigated the experiential factors of journalistic content in four different forms: an online article, audio podcast, 360-degree video viewed on a mobile phone, and 360-degree video viewed from a VR headset. Through this set-up, we explored the elements of user experience, the impact of storytelling and content, and most interestingly, the differences in preference for each media form. Our results highlight how VR might best be used in the journalistic context, where it fits into the dynamics of digital news consumption, and in which form viewers prefer to experience the presented media.