The Politics of Immersive Storytelling (original) (raw)
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In recent years the internet has begun to develop into a much more immersive and multidimensional space, and it is this emerging ‘Immersive Internet’ that has not just gripped our attention but has begun to weave or be woven into the fabric of our professional and social lives. This is likely only to go further as platform and interface developments in augmented reality, social networking sites, online games, virtual worlds, and the 3D internet signal a move towards communications technologies and virtual spaces that offer immersive experiences persuasive enough to blur the lines between the virtual and the physical. We are deeply uncertain as to what form or forms the Immersive Internet will take and what it will mean for individuals, society, culture, politics, and the economy. As these spaces, practices, and technologies progress, a more intimate and immersive internet and virtuality will emerge. At the same time as the Immersive or Intimate Internet gathers pace, it is likely that its opposite – the Invasive Internet – will continue to encroach on our lives, societies, politics, and economies. At present there are simply so many questions and unknowns about what might happen. But what we are sure of is that the evolution of such spaces and technologies will mean much for both the avatar/individual and the world(s) around it/us. This book is a collection of short thought pieces that we think critically engage with the future directions that the Immersive Internet might, should, or even should not take. The book emerged as a way of trying to collect ideas and opinions from a wide variety of people who have been heavily engaged with these sorts of questions and issues. Since the Immersive Internet – including social media, augmented reality, virtual worlds, online games, 3D internet and beyond – is still nascent or emerging and is being explored by a number of different disciplines, we assembled participants from a wide range of academic disciplines and professional backgrounds. What all these thinkers share is a deep engagement with the possibilities, both positive and negative, of a progressively more immersive and intimate set of internet-mediated spaces and interactions. The idea was not to collect a series of empirical pieces on the current state of the art but to collect pieces that provoke and attempt to take in the big picture and the long term: what we think of as, in short, Postcards from the Metaverse.
The Next Innovation in Immersive [Actuality] Media Isn’t Technology – It’s Storytelling
2019
This paper explores the raison d'être of documentarians and journalists-that of creating emotional connections by transporting audiences "into the story." Enabling technologies for delivering such experiences have become faster, cheaper, smarter, and mobile. Collectively referred to as "immersive media," such technologies have become de rigueur in actuality storytelling. Initially promoted as "empathy machines" capable of fostering emotional engagement, problems in rationalizing journalisticstyle with immersive media's "designing technology" proved frustrating. What is presented here is a view of immersive media's "narrative technology" as a new storytelling ecology evolving with the aesthetics of immersion and (hopeful) content engagement that induces a state of narrative transportation, or "flow," in which user/participants are both immersed in and actively engaged with the storytelling.
Immersive Stories From Technological Determinism Towards Narrative Determinism, 2024
This article is part of the issue “The Many Dimensions of Us: Harnessing Immersive Technologies to Communicate the Complexity of Human Experiences” edited by Nicholas David Bowman (Syracuse University), Dan Pacheco (Syracuse University), T. Makana Chock (Syracuse University), and Lyndsay Michalik Gratch (Syracuse University), fully open access at https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.i455 Abstract Following the wave of immersive production that occurred between 2015 and 2018, and in the face of new virtual, augmented, and mixed‐reality devices, this article discusses the need to move from a technology‐ or device‐focused perspective in the analysis and use of immersive technology towards a story‐focused or story‐first perspective. It starts with a technological perspective, contextualising the evolution of immersive technologies and their interpretation from a technological determinism point of view. Secondly, the ecological perspective provides an integrative reading of the technique, its use, and its experience, based on the concept of the environment. Finally, and after acknowledging previous research on the effects of immersive media on the audience, the article considers the narrative elements that are reinforced by immersive technologies in journalism and nonfiction, based on the qualitative analysis of projects. The article highlights narrative resources associated with the social character of the story, the spatio‐temporal framework, and the emotional impact. It suggests a shift towards “narrative determinism,” which would allow us to analyse and employ immersive resources in terms of their contribution to storytelling and to overcome the limitations of perspectives that are highly dependent on specific platforms or technologies. Keywords immersive storytelling; immersive technology; journalism; narrative; virtual reality
The Immersive Turn: hype and hope in the emergence of virtual reality as a nonfiction platform
This article responds to the recent wave of experimentation with Virtual Reality (VR) as a nonfiction platform. Amidst daily announcements of new VR documentary initiatives, and at times giddy claims about the potential of this new medium, I consider how a media technology expected to enter the mainstream as a games platform became a magnet for nonfiction producers. VR is not a new medium, and has been the subject of a substantial body of research across arts and science. This research is also the site of claims for the pro-social potential of VR, which provide a significant context for its adoption for nonfiction. Less attention has been given to ethical risks posed by VR, which I highlight, and suggest require attention within documentary practice. The article concludes with a discussion of the symbiotic relationship between technology and content development in this arena. All these factors have come together at the intersection of VR and nonfiction to produce a heady mix of commercial excitement (hype) and techno-utopianism (hope) which this article highlights and analyses
Choose your own future: the sociotechnical imaginaries of virtual reality
Journal of Marketing Management , 2022
Virtual Reality has been heralded variously as the next steppingstone in technological innovation, a utopian ‘empathy-machine’ and a dystopian addictive technology. Using critical discourse analysis, we explore the types of narratives underlying this global attention and the ideological values, beliefs and interests therein. We contribute to the critical marketing literature by demonstrating how an examination of sociotechnical imaginaries reveals the ways in which the market mediates the reception of new technologies and the kinds of worlds these technologies bring about. Through an interactive ‘choose your own adventure’ narrative, we bring these imaginaries into relief and invite readers to navigate alternative potential futures for VR. The data underpinning the narrative highlight the role of marketers and marketing in shaping our social, political and economic reality.
Immersive virtual reality technologies are increasingly common in the developed world of 2014. However the technology has existed in one way, or another, for over 50 years. Studies have been undertaken in the past to trace the history of this technology, and elucidate its troubled path to popularity. However the nature of the technology, as made up of many other entirely discrete technologies (displays, motion tracking, computing, computer graphics, haptic interfaces, and so on) means that conventional histories, particularly extant oral histories, often struggle to assess the range of factors affecting the technology. Virtual reality is hard to isolate as a technology, and therefore a new approach is needed to develop its history. This paper aims not to rewrite existing histories, but utilise new methodologies, inspired by those of corpus linguistics and the semantic history of discourse, to bring new light to the existing history. Access to online databases and digitised publications means high-volume samples of text are more feasible than ever: as such the study of changes in the usage of a key word across a broad range of academic and popular sources, enabled by computerised access, could yield historically valuable results. This paper shall use wide-ranging samples of academic and popular literature to examine the usage of the word ‘virtual’, creating a survey of academic, journalistic, and popular sources. Its change over time having been plotted, superposition on the existing history of virtual reality technology may be able to highlight or lend nuance to elements of the history of that technology. If the technique is successful, it may be applicable to many other technologies and concepts. It is hoped that this paper will illustrate that linguistic methods, and broad analysis of textual discourse over time, can inform understandings of the history of technologies, concepts, and philosophies, in this case setting the technological development of virtual reality against an entirely new background.
Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 2020
This paper, which is part of the field of immersive journalism studies, compares the narrative of contents published in El País VR, Folha 360o, Estadão RV and NYT VR, specific applications for 360- degree productions of the newspapers El País (Spain), Folha de S. Paulo and Estado de S. Paulo (Brazil) and New York Times (United States). In addition to identify the main characteristics of 51 publications, the main of this study is to verify the level of immersion these contents provide to the users. Due to this, a content analysis has been carried out, based on methodological contributions by authors from different countries. The final result points out that the spatial immersion level is much higher than the sensory level in most of the sample, which leads to a relative virtual reality experience for the user. Hence, with the exception of the content of NYT VR, the user does not usually feel involved psychologically about to immerse totally in the story and forget reality. Therefore, it is necessary to encourage the creation of more innovative initiatives with digital avatar narratives.
An Immersive Journey through Flawed Technology: Users’ Perceptions of VR in Journalism
Journalism and Media
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.
6. Promises, Pitfalls, and Potentials of Immersive Journalism
Insights on Immersive Journalism (ed. Sanchez Laws), 2023
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