Being There in the Midst of the Story: How Immersive Journalism Affects Our Perceptions and Cognitions (original) (raw)
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Popular claims of virtual reality systems serving as ‘empathy machines’ often fail to consider (a) the cognitive mechanisms driving the effects of technological immersion on empathy and (b) the conceptualization of empathy as a multidimensional construct. More, recent research has yielded mixed empirical support. This study investigates how dimensions of psychological presence—perceived self-location, sense of copresence, and judgments of social realism—mediate the effect of immersion on cognitive, affective, and associative empathy. Findings indicate that experiencing a news story via 360° video on a head-mounted display led to stronger self-location and copresence than engaging with the same video via desktop or reading a text version. While only copresence increased cognitive empathy, both self-location and copresence facilitated affective empathy. Whereas self-location and copresence enhanced associative empathy, social realism decreased it. These results highlight the value of ...
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A major focus of research in Virtual Reality (VR) media examines the technological affordances for creating immersion, which in turn can generate presence-the feeling of being therein a virtual environment. This research has given rise to an emerging form of fact-based storytelling called immersive journalism, a term used to describe digitally produced stories designed to provide a first-person, interactive experience with news events. This paper examines the concept of immersive journalism and discusses both its potential and its limitations as a narrative and journalistic genre. Immersive journalism will require a new narrative design framework, and four theoretical domains are discussed as underscoring this framework. The four are VR presence, narrative, cognition and journalistic ethics.
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In 2015 The Tow Center for Journalism produced a live-motion virtual reality (VR) journalism story on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, ‘Secret Location’. They stated that this new form appeared to change how journalists must construct their stories. They also challenged the industry to explore the journalistic application of VR beyond ‘highly produced documentaries’ (Owen et al. 2015. “Virtual Reality Journalism.” Tow Centre. CJR. https://www.cjr.org/tow\_center\_reports/virtual\_reality\_journalism.php). We decided to make a short news VR film that explored the construction of this form of media and asked which narrative characteristic engaged the viewer to continue watching in a medium where the viewer was already immersed in the storyworld. Our findings suggest that even when the VR technology immerses the viewer into an illusion of presence, the traditional characteristics of narrative, character, plot, and subject remain of fundamental importance in the construction of a news sto...
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When moving the discussion from VR-based interactive fiction to non-fiction genres such as immersive journalism, several issues of critical concern come to the fore: 1) How can the informants (or, indeed, the objects) of the immersive experiences implied by 360-degree journalism be adequately protected and how can they be properly included in the projects realized in their life worlds? 2) Which implicit understandings of realism are underlying the widespread presumption of VR-promoters to be able to offer unmitigated access to the lives of others? 3) Is the triggering of emotional reactions really a task for journalists, and if yes, what are the wider implications of this for the journalistic profession? And finally, 4) how can audiences be sufficiently made aware of the manipulative nature, constructed frames, and potentially disturbing effects of the simulations they are immersed in? This chapter will unpack these questions, which continue to haunt current attempts to realize the potentials of immersive journalism. The chapter proposes how a genuinely ethical immersive journalism might look like, and how the identified severe ethical and epistemological problems can be addressed in a productive and progressive manner
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Immersive journalism has been promoted as an alternative way of producing content that allows users to experience first-hand the events depicted in the news story. This mixed-method study examines how immersive journalism impacts the user experience of non-fictional narratives in news practices. A between-subject experiment (n = 104) was conducted to inspect the effects of system immersion on place illusion and co-presence. Using a 360-degree video news report produced by the Spanish newspaper El País as a stimulus, two viewing conditions were compared: magic window and 360 degree with a VR headset. The results show that VR technologies determine the effective potential of immersive journalism, namely the experience of place illusion and co-presence and that audiences do not actually explore the so-called whole picture, as a 90–180° movement for exploration prevailed.
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Major news outlets increasingly use immersive techniques in their journalistic productions. The idea is that, through the application of immersive technologies, the news consumer can engage with and be part of the story. However, we do not know, to what extent this promise is actually fulfilled in productions currently accessible to news audiences. This study uses a multi-step approach to fill this knowledge gap. First, based on an interdisciplinary literature review, we propose a conceptual model of immersive journalism. We then use the elements of this model to content analyze 189 journalistic productions that are labeled as immersive by the producers, including 360 degree videos, computer-generated VR, and interactive, 360 web productions, stemming from a variety of outlets and countries. Results show that the level of user immersion in these productions is actually limited, with little interaction and technical inclusion possibilities. Our results contribute to an emerging field...
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Virtual reality (VR) and other immersive technologies introduce new opportunities for emotionally compelling narratives and user agency. Virtually mediated environments lie at the heart of immersive journalism (IJ) experiences, foregrounding a sense of presence and bridging the connection between the user and the character. Mediated environments in VR stories provide more than a setting since the user can interact with and respond to the surroundings. Drawing on the theory of spatial narrative, documentary and cinema literature and studies on media morality, this article examines the meaning of place in VR news stories and its ability to engage the user with the story. This study contributes to the discussion of creating and communicating places in journalism studies by examining spatial storytelling in immersive news stories, which are available in the NYT VR smartphone application. This paper argues that spatial storytelling eventually affects what is experienced and how it is experienced either by demonstrating the circumstances with aesthetical elements or via the selection of spaces.
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Virtual reality (VR) has had the reputation of being a revolutionising technology ever since it emerged in the early 1960s, but virtual is not yet a successful reality in journalistic practice. Examining VR’s current situation and the factors preventing it from reaching its predicted potential in digital journalism, this paper analyses the user comments (n = 770) on 15 journalistic VR apps offered by media organizations, with the help of a qualitative-reductive content analysis. Deductive categories of analysis contain the constructs of immersion, emotion, usability, and utility, which are further specified by inductive subcategories in the course of the analysis. Results show that users positively highlight different aspects of emotion and immersion that the VR apps elicit, and criticize journalistic VR apps for their low levels of utility and usability. Implications for journalistic practice and research are subsequently drawn.