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From “Cool Observer” to “Emotional Participant”: The Practice of Immersive Journalism
Abstract
Over the past years, innovative technologies (such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR)) have become more common within news organizations. These technologies allow users to immerse themselves in a virtual world. With these types of productions, the journalist tries to engage and involve the user by introducing emotional styles, often to create empathy. This does not only demand new technological skills, but also challenges the way journalist allow emotions in journalistic productions, and what role they take in relation to the story and the user. Through fifteen in-depth interviews with immersive producers and experts in renowned news organizations across the globe, this paper examines both the motivations of journalists who produce immersive stories, and how they seek to balance traditional journalistic norms and emotionality in them. The results show that journalists believe that emotions and facts can be compatible with journalistic production. Yet, they struggle with their role in relation to the user. Immersive journalism obliges journalists to carefully reconsider their relationship with their public. In sum, this study illuminates an ongoing professional debate on the role of emotionality, user agency, and journalistic control and autonomy.
... However, the adaptation of IJ by media organizations is a costly endeavor that challenges fundamental journalistic values of objectivity and transparency (Goutier et al. 2021). More importantly, the audience has not yet widely adopted IJ Watson 2017), and we simply do not know why. ...
... Immersive Journalism-It's all About the Audience IJ is conceptualized as a form of journalism that uses immersive storylines and immersive technology to convey an emotionally compelling, all-encompassing experience of the news de Bruin et al. 2020). With its immersive capabilities, journalists started to use IJ to create more emotional and engaging news stories (Goutier et al. 2021). IJ evolved along with an increasing focus of journalism on emotions to connect with the audience (Beckett and Deuze 2016;Wahl-Jorgensen 2020) and the growing understanding of the importance of the audience to journalism (Costera Meijer 2020; Nelson 2021). ...
A growing number of studies in journalism research are concerned with the effects of immersive journalism (IJ) on audience perceptions and behaviors. This interest in IJ is logical, because IJ has the potential to become an impactful innovation for the industry. However, we have largely neglected the question of whether audiences want this form of emotional journalism. This study fills this gap and investigates whether people consider IJ worth their while. Using a factorial survey design, we presented a sample of 2000 German citizens with descriptions of an immersive production about protests in Belarus, in which we manipulate the use of inclusive technology (VR vs. AR vs. video), immersive narratives (first person vs. third person), agency (choice of perspective vs. no choice of perspective and control of location vs. no control), and emotionality (positive vs. negative vs. neutral tone). The analyzes reveal that an immersive narrative perspective, control and emotionality do not predict worthwhileness perceptions. However, productions that present people with inclusion and technological agency render this production more worthwhile in the eye of the individual user.
... Immersive Journalism -A Different Way to Experience the News IJ was introduced by Nonny De la Peña, who developed computer-animated (CGI) VR experiences based on news stories, which enabled participants to have a first-person account of an event (De la Peña et al. 2010). Since then, IJ has captured the interest of media actors, who are fascinated by its ability to emotionally engage the audience (Goutier et al. 2021;S anchez-Laws 2019), and potentially aid their economic survival by appealing to a younger audience (Jones 2017). Accordingly, media organizations such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and Euronews have started to use IJ. ...
Immersive journalism (IJ) is often assumed to be inherently emotion-inducing. Through using inclusive technology, interaction possibilities and immersive narratives, the audience should ideally experience what feels like to be in a certain situation. However, for the most part we do not know to which extent and in what form IJ influences the experience of emotions. We wanted to investigate, whether, and if so, which characteristics of IJ are related to the experience of emotions, and which role the personality trait empathy tendency plays in this respect. This is important, as the evaluation of IJ often relies on the emotion-inducing assumption thereof. Four different experiments comparing one immersive journalistic characteristic (level of inclusion, interaction possibilities, immersive narratives) to the respective non-immersive counterpart were conducted. Results indicate that while the level of inclusion and interaction possibility increase the intensity of the experience, the immersive narrative influences the valence dimension of emotions. Additionally, empathy tendency is found to be a relevant moderator for these effects. Conclusions are threefold. First, the narrative form of IJ is key; second, the analysis of IJ needs to go beyond the level of inclusion; third, including emotions when assessing IJ is fundamental to understand its impact.
... While aiming at placing the receptor at the center of the narrative experience-as a witness or as the protagonist in a simulation of the real [11]-immersive journalism has been proposed as part of an emotional turn in journalism studies, stressing the need for a renewed attention not only to audience perceptions, but crucially to the emotional labor central to professionals' storytelling [12][13][14][15]. Nevertheless, until now, few studies have examined the relationship between distinct immersive technologies and journalistic narrative and particularly how they combine in the elaboration of the referred first-person experience. ...
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.
Habere olan güvenini ve ilgisini yitirmiş okurlar için haberleri tekrar ilgi çekici hale getirmek amacıyla ortaya konulan sürükleyici gazetecilik, sanal gerçeklik teknolojisinden yararlanan duygu odaklı bir habercilik alanıdır. Ürettiği içeriklerle empati oluşturmasına ve bireylerin olayları ‘oradaymış gibi’ deneyimlemesine olanak tanıyan sürükleyici gazetecilikte bir mevcudiyet hissi yaşatmak hedeflenmekte ve böylece izleyici katılımının artırılabileceği ileri sürülmektedir. Sürükleyici gazetecilik türünün temel özellikleri, gazetecilerin değişen rolü ve etik normları konu edinen bu çalışmanın amacı, sürükleyici gazetecilik hakkında bilgi vermek ve konuyla ilgili yapılacak gelecek araştırmalar için teorik bir alt yapı oluşturmaktır. Literatür taraması ile elde edilen sonuçlar, sürükleyici gazetecilikte gazetecilik rollerinin yayıcı model ve bilgi-eğlence haberciliği çerçevesinde gerçekleştiğini, haber değerlerinin ise dramatik konulara ağırlık veren az sayıda değerle sınırlandığını göstermektedir. Çalışma kapsamında elde edilen bir diğer dikkat çekici sonuç ise sürükleyici gazetecilik yapan gazetecilerin niyetleriyle ilgili olmuştur. Bu yeni gazetecilik türünde içerik oluşturanların niyeti oldukça önem taşımaktadır. Belirtilenler doğrultusunda sürükleyici gazeteciliğin sağlıklı bir şekilde anlaşılabilmesi ve bu gazetecilik türünün yaşadığı/yaşayacağı olumsuz yönleri en düşük seviyede tutabilmek için duygusal okuryazarlık kavramına önem verilmesi gerekmektedir.
Las tecnologías de realidad virtual y vídeo 360 grados se introdujeron en las redacciones y laboratorios de innovación a mediados de la década de 2010 como una nueva forma de contar historias. Con todo, el vídeo 360 grados se postuló como alternativa más viable frente a la auténtica realidad virtual, tanto por inversión como por tiempos de producción. Los medios exploraron sus posibilidades al abrigo de un periodismo inmersivo hasta su declive a partir de los años 2018 y 2019. Esta investigación analiza el impacto que el vídeo 360 grados ha tenido en la producción periodística atendiendo a tres perspectivas: el valor del formato para el relato, la narrativa inmersiva y los retos que condicionan su consolidación. Para ello, se realizan entrevistas semiestructuradas en profundidad a profesionales y expertos académicos en este ámbito (N = 11). La experiencia en primera persona emerge como factor diferencial, introduciendo una dimensión vivencial en el consumo. A su vez, el formato exige otra forma de contar el relato, adaptado a la inmersividad y a la espacialidad. Su viabilidad futura resulta incierta por su elevado coste, la ausencia de un modelo de negocio sostenible y la baja penetración de las gafas de realidad virtual.
Sanal gerçeklik teknolojileri dijital dönüşümün neticesinde giderek kendini geliştirmekte ve birçok alanın içerisine dahil olabilmektedir. Bu teknolojinin gazeteciliğin içine girmesinin sonucunda da farklı anlatı türleri ortaya çıkmaktadır. Sürükleyici (immersive) gazetecilik, sözü edilen anlatı türlerinden biri olarak kendini göstermektedir. Immersive kelimesi sarmal, sarmalayan, üç boyutlu, sürükleyici gibi farklı anlamlarda kullanılmakta ancak gazetecilik ile bir arada değerlendirildiğinde tam olarak Türkçe karşılığı bulunmamaktadır. Çalışmada bu sebeple yaygın olarak tercih edilen sürükleyici gazetecilik terimi kullanılmıştır. Sanal gerçeklik teknolojilerinin sunduğu imkanlar doğrultusunda gerçekleştirilen bu gazetecilik türü günümüzde ağırlıklı olarak 360° ile izlemeye imkan tanıyan görüntülerden oluşmaktadır. Bu kapsamda çalışmada 360° görüntülerle haberlerini oluşturan Euronews ve The New York Times incelenerek her iki haber mecrasının YouTube üzerinden yükledikleri haber videoları içerik analizi yöntemiyle değerlendirilmiştir. Çalışmanın sonucunda 360° haber videolarının ağırlıklı olarak kültür - sanat ve seyahat konularında verildiği, mecraların 360° haber videoları yükleme sıklıklarının yıllar içerisinde farklılaştığı ve her iki mecranın da haberlerini benzer sürelerde sundukları saptanmıştır.
Sanal gerçeklik teknolojilerini haber, okur ve meslek profesyonelleri bağlamında tartışmaktadır. Sanal gerçeklik teknolojilerinin oldukça uzun bir tarihi vardır. Ancak özellikle son on yılda önemli bir atılım gösteren bu teknolojiler hayatın birçok alanına girmiştir. Geleceğe yönelik yapılan kestirimler, sanal gerçeklik teknolojilerinin, kısa süre
içinde çok daha yaygın bir biçimde kullanılacağı ve insanların gündelik hayatlarının bir parçası olacağı yönündedir. Bu teknoloji, bir süredir gazetecilikte de kullanılmaktadır. Sanal gerçeklik teknolojileri ile üretilmiş haberlerin henüz geniş bir kitleye erişimi olmasa da ilerleyen yıllarda bunun değişeceği de söylenebilir. Bu değişim sürecinin başında gazetecilerin sanal gerçeklik, haber ve okur kavramları üzerinde düşünmeleri ve bu teknolojileri kullanarak hikâye anlatma becerilerini geliştirmeleri, gazetecilik açısından önemlidir. Bu çalışma sanal gerçeklik teknolojilerinin gazetecilik, haber ve okur açısından önemli boyutlarını tartışmaktadır. Haberin çok daha güçlü duygular uyandırabildiği bir ortamda, okuyucunun olayın merkezinde olduğu haberler üretmek ve nesnel olabilmeyi başarabilmek önemli zorluklardan biri olarak belirmektedir.
İnsanı insan yapan en temel niteliklerden biri teknolojiyi kullanabilme becerisi ise diğer de iletişim kurma ve dolayısıyla bilgiyi geleceğe taşıyabilmedir. Teknolojik gelişmeler yazılımsal ve donanımsal olarak hızla devam etmektedir. Kurum ve kuruluşların, Web 3.0 ile birlikte bireyin iletişim içine girme, bilgiyi arşivleme-paylaşabilme ve toplumsallaşma biçimleri daha önceki dönemlerden çok daha dramatik biçimde dönüşmektedir. Bu makale, teknolojinin gelişimine bağlı olarak yeni gazetecilik türleri varsayımından hareket etmektedir. Medya her zaman teknolojinin en sadık takipçileri olagelmiştir. Matbaanın icadı ile başlayan medya kuruluşlarının teknolojiyi yakın takibi, gazete, televizyon, radyo ve yeni medya uzantılarında devam ederken kaçınılmaz olarak, veri gazeteciliği, robot gazetecilik, drone gazeteciliği, artırılmış gerçeklik gazeteciliği, blokzincir gazeteciliği vb. yeni gazetecilik türlerini ve pratiklerini ortaya çıkarmaktadır. Yeni türlerden biri de sürükleyici gazeteciliktir. Teknolojik gelişmeler, sanal gerçeklik (VR) ve artırılmış gerçeklik (AR) teknolojilerini kullanan bu gazetecilik türünün kalıcı olmayacağı, dolayısıyla kullanıcıları, gazetecileri ve medya kuruluşlarını yeni bir mecraya hazırladığını ortaya çıkarmaktır. Bu makale, sürükleyici gazeteciliği tanımlama girişimidir. Betimsel analiz yöntemiyle, sürükleyici gazeteciliğin ne olduğu, niye ortaya çıktığı ve nasıl uygulandığı anlaşılmaya çalışılmaktadır; dolayısıyla yeni bir mecra olan Metaverse’a uyumlaşma sağlayabilecek bir gazetecilik türü olup olmadığı sorgulanabilecektir. Böylece Türkiye’de şu ana kadar sınırlı sayıda akademik çalışma yapılmış olan bu gazetecilik türünün gelecek çalışmalar için meta-veri olarak işlev göreceği umut edilmektedir.
As newsrooms begin to produce more immersive stories to better engage audiences, little is known about how immersive journalism compares with traditional journalism as we know it. Defined as news that is created with virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and 360° video technologies, research has tended to focus on ways to define it, and its effects on audiences and journalists. Understanding the extent to which immersive journalism adheres to long-held news values, norms, roles, and routines in journalism is essential as part of “boundary work”, where boundaries that form the essence of journalism legitimize the profession and help journalists understand their work. This study examines 200 immersive stories from five prominent news organizations leading in their production of immersive stories, The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, BBC and The Washington Post. Results indicate that immersive stories remain timely and tend to focus on what is unusual or of human interest. When it comes to sources, there is a shift away from government voices towards civil society. Notably, however, while high on displaying objectivity, there is a lack of source and process transparency in immersive stories, and the infotainment role ranks high, presenting some concerns for journalistic practice.
This article presents the findings from an experimental study on the use of binaural audio in two long-form journalistic features broadcast on Portuguese radio. From a production and narrative design perspective, our objective is to examine whether/how binaural audio implies a transformation of previously established news radio production work principles and practices, as well as of storytelling ideation and techniques. From a user experience viewpoint, we examine whether the use of binaural audio translates into higher levels of self-reported immersion and place illusion (n = 77). Despite the spread of new audio journalism formats, media and communication studies have until now largely neglected the role of spatial audio in the construction of immersion and the illusion of place. We argue that this epistemic omission translates into an image-centric conception and operationalization of the immersive journalism proposal, which stands out as a knowledge gap regarding the work of journalistic storytellers and relating to participants' actual experience. The original contribution of this article is threefold: (1) conceptual, by broadening the perspective of journalism studies' scholars and media professionals on the concept of immersive journalism, which, in our view, is often incorrectly considered to be synonymous with that of virtual reality journalism; (2) practical, by generating a more nuanced understanding of how actual practitioners perceive and employ immersive journalism; (3) phenomenological, by developing an examination of the factors that influence listeners' ultimate perception of the immersive experience.
The evolution of digital media has fostered the emergence of new and adapted forms of storytelling. Journalism combines classic narrative resources with technology and interactive strategies to inform, explain and represent reality. After an initial stage of adaptation and experimentation, it is necessary to reflect on the contribution of the new formats to contemporary, quality journalism for new active audiences. This chapter summarizes the evolution of digital journalistic narrative to identify the differentiating elements that have come from the intersection of documentary and journalism, as well as the new approaches that have arisen from immersive technologies. A panoramic vision will allow us to establish a roadmap to advance the production and research of storytelling for a complex world.KeywordsDigital journalismNarrativeInteractionImmersion
Until recently, the notion of emotion in media studies and communication research was mostly examined through the lens of cultural studies, media effects, and visuals. Research on emotion in journalism has been slow to arrive, as Karin Wahl-Jorgensen shows in this special issue. However, this is radically changing. Contributions by Hassan, Kilgo, Lough, Riedl, Sanchez Laws, Waddell, and Zou highlight how the affordances of digital journalism have an impact on the space for emotion in evaluating the relationships between journalists, journalistic content and their audiences. Embracing emotions as a dimension in digital journalism studies contributes to opening up interesting approaches towards concepts such as objectivity, and for more nuanced research on the power hidden in the ‘taken for granted’ in classic liberal journalism. While highlighting the liberating and empowering potential in the inclusion of emotions in journalism, there is also a need to focus on how affective dynamics can be spurred by phenomena such as conflict and hate. When introducing emotions in the journalistic loop, new questions arise, and perspectives of power and negotiations must be included in these discussions.
The emotional turn in journalism studies is fueled by new forms of emotion-driven journalistic work, such as immersive journalism and constructive journalism. However, because these innovations are developed to ultimately re-connect journalists with disenfranchised and fragmented audiences, they highlight the need for a more thorough study of audience perceptions in our field.
This study responds to recent calls to investigate how media users perceive virtual reality technology in journalism. Within a uses and gratifications framework, focus group participants were asked to experience recent immersive journalistic productions and discuss their reactions. Six distinct gratifications were identified, which cluster into gratifications related to experience, affect, and action. Despite clear reservations about the technology, users see great potential for journalistic use. If employed responsibly, users think virtual reality can add considerable value to mainstream journalistic productions, potentially boosting engagement and trust. Researchers and practitioners can benefit from this initial study of users’ impressions of and reactions to immersive journalism.
The article seeks to review current work on the obvious but complex entanglement of journalism and emotion. The field has been under‐theorized and under‐researched; however, in recent years, the body of studies that attempt to grasp the relationship between journalism, journalists, media content, and emotion is growing. The paper roughly systematizes the literature on journalism and emotion based on the Goffmanian distinction between front region and back region; that is, I consider both research on emotionality of the public outcomes of journalists' work marked by journalists' professional ideology and less visible journalists' emotional labour that is behind media content. Based on the review of the body of research and on a sociological conceptualization of emotions, I identify several blind spots. Most importantly, what is still largely missing from the emergent work is research that complies with the social character of journalists' emotions: acknowledges emotions as a force central to the contemporary networked, dynamic and increasingly precarious journalism work, and conceptualizes emotions in journalism as a sociologically relevant phenomenon articulated by the context including newswork, technologies, and media organizations.
The study of emotion in journalism has largely been ignored and, when studied, is relegated almost exclusively to media texts. As such, this research aims to rectify this imbalance by focusing on the human side of journalism practice and the emotional labor and work experienced by documentary visual journalists. It does so through an in-depth, interview-based approach with 23 journalists in eight countries and identifies the sources of emotional labor and work experienced by those in the profession and how visual journalists manage the effects of the emotional labor and work they experience. The findings suggest that emotional labor and work pervade the production, editing, and post-production phases of journalistic work but not equally for all types of visual journalists. Female journalists, in particular, reported unique emotional investment and display practices, while a subset of male journalists reported unique emotional management ones. In addition, almost across the board, the visual journalists in this sample reported relying on more informal rather than formal strategies to manage the effects of their work-related emotions.
Virtual Reality (VR) has been recently gaining interest from researchers and companies, contributing to the development of the associated technologies that aim to transport its users to a Virtual Environment (VE) by the stimulation of their senses. Technologies such as Head-Mounted Displays (HMD), capable of presenting 360
video in 3D, are becoming affordable and, consequently, more common amongst the average consumer, potentiating the creation of a market for VR experiences. The purpose of this study is to measure the influence of a) video format (2D/monoscopic vs 3D/stereoscopic), b) sound format (2D/stereo vs 3D/spatialized), and c) gender on users' sense of presence and cybersickness, while experiencing a VR application using an HMD. Presence and cybersickness were measured using questionnaires as subjective measures. Portuguese versions of the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) for presence and the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) for cybersickness were used. Results revealed no statistically significant differences between a) VIDEO and b) SOUND variables on both senses of presence and cybersickness. When paired with a) VIDEO, the independent variable c) Gender showed significant differences on almost all subscales of presence. Results suggest that the widely-acknowledged differences in spatial ability between genders were a major factor contributing to this outcome.
The disappearance of the screen’s physical barrier, the fourth wall, challenges many of the narrative conventions used in the traditional journalistic account. This is an area in which we are still taking the first steps, but these moves have already raised interesting narratological challenges. Technological development allows us not only to have the sensation of being elsewhere but also to interact with the storytelling elements. In this article, the author reviews the steps that have been taken up to the present time in the use of these platforms for news. She revises as well the reflections carried out by disciplines connected with narrative construction on the challenges of this new way of factual storytelling. The implications of being inside the scene of the action and being able to interact with it means rethinking the conventions of audiovisual editing and the visual perspective of the audience, as well as the relevance of the three-dimensional nature of real sound and the freedom to act inside the story without modifying the real course of the events.
Presence is widely accepted as the key concept to be considered in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality (VR). Since its original description, the concept of presence has developed over the past decade to be considered by many researchers as the essence of any experience in a virtual environment. The VR generating systems comprise two main parts: a technological component and a psychological experience. The different relevance given to them produced two different but coexisting visions of presence: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). The main result of this approach is the definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation produced by means of the disappearance of the medium from the conscious attention of the subject. At the other extreme, there is the psychological or ecological perspective (Inner Presence). Specifically, this perspective considers presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon, evolved from the interplay of our biological and cultural inheritance, whose goal is the control of the human activity. Given its key role and the rate at which new approaches to understanding and examining presence are appearing, this chapter draws together current research on presence to provide an up to date overview of the most widely accepted approaches to its understanding and measurement.
In this essay, we contextualize journalism in an emotionally charged networked environment. As journalism and society change, emotion is becoming a much more important dynamic in how news is produced and consumed. Highlighting how quality reporting and editing has always had emotion at its core, we move on to articulate ways to do “affective” news well and advocate promising avenues to study and theorize it. In this context, we suggest that more research and knowledge is needed regarding the ontology of data, the political economy of identity when privacy goes public, and on the sociology of influence when power is redistributed emotionally.
Contemporary digital game developers offer a variety of games for the diverse tastes of their customers. Although the gaming experience often depends on one's preferences, the same may not apply to the level of their immersion. It has been argued whether the player perspective can influence the level of player's involvement with the game. The aim of this study was to research whether interacting with a game in first person perspective is more immersive than playing in the third person point of view (POV). The set up to test the theory involved participants playing a role-playing game in either mode, naming their preferred perspective, and subjectively evaluating their immersive experience. The results showed that people were more immersed in the game play when viewing the game world through the eyes of the character, regardless of their preferred perspectives.
Emotion is often treated as unconducive to rationality and informed citizenship. For this reason, journalistic styles that personalize issues and elicit emotion are typically not taken seriously as information sources. The experimental study reported here tested these sentiments through the knowledge gap hypothesis. Eight investigative news stories, arguably important to informed citizenship (e.g., child labor, corruption in public housing administration, lethality of legal drugs), were each presented in two versions. One featured emotional testimony of ordinary people who experienced the issue, and the other did not—resembling the traditional view of news as cold hard facts. Emotional versions were associated with smaller knowledge gaps between higher and lower education groups. Moreover, the size of knowledge gaps varied across three memory measures: free recall, cued recall, and recognition. Contrary to the inimical role that is traditionally assigned to emotion, these findings suggest a facilitative role for emotion in informing citizens.
Visualizing news is increasingly considered an apt way for dealing with two challenges of modern journalism: disclosing big data and presenting complex information in a way that is easy to comprehend. Newsrooms are trying their hand at it, and finding ways to organize the production of information visualizations effectively. This study delves into reported challenges for the production of news visualizations and suggests, in line with findings from the research case studies, that the introduction of information visualization in the media requires a convergence of journalistic and visual thinking skills, a more iterative news production process and a revised view of the function of news per se.
This dissertation explores the 'blurring' of news styles and emergence of new forms within American television journalism over the past 25 years. It considers how the roles of emotion and 'objectivity' have been reconfigured in a climate of unprecedented technological and commercial shifts. It is unique as it investigates two innovative forms of broadcast journalism, satirical news and cable magazines, not just in terms of content, but instead drawing on the sociology of emotions to conceptualize and examine how these shows attempt to craft an 'experience of involvement'. I perform a textual analysis that considers the presentational style and branding of The O'Reilly Factor, Lou Dobbs Tonight, The Daily Show, and Colbert Report. Findings are based on a lengthy observation of each program and an in-depth examination from 2007. These analyses are situated against an examination of the CBS Evening News from 1979 and 2007. Secondary material in which key players from these programs explain the rationales behind how they craft the news is also integrated. This study finds that cable and satirical news differentiate themselves by attempting to craft a more 'involved' presentational style than network newscasts, but simultaneously adhere to many conventional journalistic 'rules of truth'. There are also indications that network news, though maintaining a fairly consistent tone, is beginning to address this issue of involvement. Emerging news products often adopt a style that satirist Stephen Colbert terms 'truthiness', wherein tone and style become more central in attempting to generate certainty, fidelity, and trust. I argue that rather than lament the 'loss' of a supposed halcyon age of serious journalism, it is fruitful to take a closer look at how such products engage a progressively fragmented and time-strapped public, who are losing trust in traditional news. In academia, such 'infotainment' is regularly ignored, often considered as unworthy of meticulous contemplation despite its reach and influence. This dissertation can be situated instead in an emerging stream of research that stresses the sociological and cultural importance of non-valorized news forms. I locate these emerging forms as part of a broader shift described by others towards conversationalisation, personalisation and informalisation.
In relation to journalism, the concept of ‘emotion’ is consistently undertheorized. Employed with commonsensical discernment, it is conflated with tabloid practices, sensationalism, bias, commercialization, and the like. Consequently, when discussed, emotion is often treated dismissively; a marker of unprincipled and flawed journalism. Yet hard, self-styled objective, ‘just the facts’ journalism is not unemotional, just as soft, so-called tabloid news is not irrational. For authors who study the sociology of emotions note, emotion has a social component and can more broadly be conceptualized as the experience of involvement. This article utilizes this understanding to interrogate traditional news dichotomies before applying this perspective to consider non-valorized news alternatives. One significant change over the past few decades is not that the news has become emotional (indeed, it has always been); rather, the diversity of emotional styles, the acceptability of journalistic involvement, and attempts to involve the audience have become more explicit.
This article engages with current discussions about public emotions by examining journalists’ perceptions of the value of emotional expression in broadcast news. First, the study provides insight into how journalists assess the place and role of emotion in news reporting and the perceived emotionalizing of news. Second, it examines how the journalists’ discourse about emotion is linked to their ideas of ‘good journalism’, as well as to their professional self-image. The data consist of in-depth interviews with television journalists working for both public service and commercial news programmes in Finland and in the Netherlands.
The newspapermen studied believe they may mitigate such continual pressures as deadlines, possible libel suits, and anticipated reprimands of superiors by being able to claim that their work is "objective." This article examines three factors which help a newsman to define an "objective fact": form, content, and interorganizational relationships. It shows that in discussing content and interorganizational relationships, the newsman can only invoke his news judgment; however, he can claim objectivity by citing procedures he has followed which exemplify the formal attributes of a news history or a newspaper. For instance, the newsman can suggest that he quoted other people instead of offering his own opinions. The article suggests that "objectivity" may be seen as a strategic ritual protecting newspapermen from the risks of their trade. It asks whether other professions might not also use the term "objectivity" in the same way.
This paper introduces the concept and discusses the implications of immersive journalism, which is the production of news in a form in which people can gain first-person experiences of the events or situation described in news stories. The fundamental idea of immersive journalism is to allow the participant, typically represented as a digital avatar, to actually enter a virtually recreated scenario representing the news story. The sense of presence obtained through an immersive system (whether a Cave or head-tracked head-mounted displays [HMD] and online virtual worlds, such as video games and online virtual worlds) affords the participant unprecedented access to the sights and sounds, and possibly feelings and emotions, that accompany the news. This paper surveys current approaches to immersive journalism and the theoretical background supporting claims regarding avatar experience in immersive systems. We also provide a specific demonstration: giving participants the experience of being in an interrogation room in an offshore prison. By both describing current approaches and demonstrating an immersive journalism experience, we open a new avenue for research into how presence can be utilized in the field of news and nonfiction.
The present study is designed to test the role of immersion and media content in the sense of presence. Specifically, we are interested in the affective valence of the virtual environments. This paper describes an experiment that compares three immersive systems (a PC monitor, a rear projected video wall, and a head-mounted display) and two virtual environments, one involving emotional content and the other not. The purpose of the experiment was to test the interactive role of these two media characteristics (form and content). Scores on two self-report presence measurements were compared among six groups of 10 people each. The results suggest that both immersion and affective content have an impact on presence. However, immersion was more relevant for non-emotional environments than for emotional ones.
Immersive virtual environments can break the deep, everyday connection between where our senses tell us we are and where we are actually located and whom we are with. The concept of 'presence' refers to the phenomenon of behaving and feeling as if we are in the virtual world created by computer displays. In this article, we argue that presence is worthy of study by neuroscientists, and that it might aid the study of perception and consciousness.
Many studies showed the ability of movies and imagery techniques to elicit emotions. Nevertheless, it is less clear how to manipulate the content of interactive media to induce specific emotional responses. In particular, this is true for the emerging medium virtual reality (VR), whose main feature is the ability to induce a feeling of "presence" in the computer-generated world experienced by the user. The main goal of this study was to analyze the possible use of VR as an affective medium. Within this general goal, the study also analyzed the relationship between presence and emotions. The results confirmed the efficacy of VR as affective medium: the interaction with "anxious" and "relaxing" virtual environments produced anxiety and relaxation. The data also showed a circular interaction between presence and emotions: on one side, the feeling of presence was greater in the "emotional" environments; on the other side, the emotional state was influenced by the level of presence. The significance of these results for the assessment of affective interaction is discussed.
Virtual Reality (VR) journalism has brought many changes to journalistic practice, calling facticity, accuracy, objectivity and autonomy into question. This study examines factors influencing objectivity and its significance in VR journalism from the perspective of VR content creators. The researcher conducted 27 semi-structured interviews with fact-based VR content creators. The findings showed the diverse understandings of objectivity among VR content creators and the growing acceptance of VR as a subjective experience. The 360° spherical view reduces the ability to frame the content. The different story-paths in interactive VR storytelling may add perspectives to the story. However, the VR user retains the ability to actively explore the virtual environment, deciding what to experience and what to dismiss. VR emphasises user-induced subjectivity in addition to the already existing journalist-induced subjectivity, in which the journalist chooses camera placement and provides a guided experience. Subjectivity is inescapable in VR and its impact is magnified, suggesting extra caution from VR content creators to protect users and affirming the need for the notion of pragmatic objectivity.
This article develops the idea of an “emotional turn” in journalism studies, which has led to an increasingly nuanced investigation of the role of emotion in the production, texts and audience engagement with journalism. These developments have occurred in tandem with, and accelerated by, the emergence of digital and social media. Research on news production has shown that journalistic work has always taken emotion into consideration, shaping approaches to storytelling and presentation. However, the view of journalists as detached observers has rendered the emotional labor associated with news production invisible. Research on emotion in journalistic texts has highlighted the fact that even conventional “hard news genres” are shaped by an engagement with emotion. As studies on news audiences and emotions have shown, audiences are more likely to be emotionally engaged, recall information and take action when news stories are relatable. The affordances of digital platforms and social media have had a profound impact on the space for emotion. The expanded opportunities for participation have contributed to questioning traditional distinctions between news audiences and producers and have ushered in new and more forms of emotional expression that have spilled over into practices of news production.
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 of journalism studies, in which the user plays a new role when interacting with advancing technologies.
Immersive journalism in the form of virtual reality (VR) headsets and 360°-video is becoming more mainstream and is much touted for inducing greater "presence" than traditional text. But, does this presence influence psychological outcomes of reading news, such as memory for story content, perceptions of credibility, and empathy felt toward story characters? We propose that two key technological affordances of VR (modality and interactivity) are responsible for triggering three presence-related cognitive heuristics (being-there, interaction, and realism), which influence news readers' memory and their perceptions of credibility, empathy, and story-sharing intentions. We report a 3 (storytelling medium: VR vs. 360°-video vs. Text) × 2 (story: "The displaced" and "The click effect") mixed-factorial experiment, in which participants (N = 129) experienced two New York Times stories (that differed in their emotional intensity) using one of the three mediums (VR, 360°-video, Text). Participants who experienced the stories using VR and 360°-video outperformed those who read the same stories using text with pictures, not only on such presence-related outcomes as being-there, interaction, and realism, but also on perceived source credibility, story-sharing intention, and feelings of empathy. Moreover, we found that senses of being-there, interaction, and realism mediated the relationship between storytelling medium and reader perceptions of credibility, story recall, and story-sharing intention. These findings have theoretical implications for the psychology of virtual reality, and practical applications for immersive journalism in particular and interactive media in general.
Major news outlets such as the New York Times and the Guardian have recently launched ambitious immersive journalism projects. Adopting the technologies and rhetoric of immersive journalism first presented by Nonny de la Peña in 2010, these news outlets seek to use virtual reality and 360 video to create deeper engagement and empathy with their audiences. Yet can immersive journalism enhance empathy? This question is unanswerable without a thorough discussion of the concept of empathy, a discussion that so far has been missing in the academic literature and popular commentary. This article addresses the gap by presenting current debates about the definition of empathy and using these debates to critically assess de la Peña’s immersive journalism projects “IPSRESS” and “Hunger in Los Angeles,” and the recent New York Times “The Displaced” and Guardian’s “6 × 9” immersive journalism projects. The conclusion is twofold: On the one hand, I will argue that some immersive journalism projects are approaching a format that may enhance empathy, and on the other hand, I will propose that the project of immersive journalism needs to go beyond this goal and into adopting a more forceful role in shaping the future of virtual reality.
Psychological research into human factors frequently uses simulations to study the relationship between human behaviour and the environment. Their validity depends on their similarity with the physical environments. This paper aims to validate three environmental-simulation display formats: photographs, 360° panoramas, and virtual reality. To do this we compared the psychological and physiological responses evoked by simulated environments set-ups to those from a physical environment setup; we also assessed the users' sense of presence. Analysis show that 360° panoramas offer the closest to reality results according to the participants' psychological responses, and virtual reality according to the physiological responses. Correlations between the feeling of presence and physiological and other psychological responses were also observed. These results may be of interest to researchers using environmental-simulation technologies currently available in order to replicate the experience of physical environments.
Detecting and measuring emotional responses while interacting with virtual reality (VR), and assessing and interpreting their impacts on human engagement and “immersion,” are both academically and technologically challenging. While many researchers have, in the past, focused on the affective evaluation of passive environments, such as listening to music or the observation of videos and imagery, virtual realities and related interactive environments have been used in only a small number of research studies as a mean of presenting emotional stimuli. This article reports the first stage (focusing on participants’ subjective responses) of a range of experimental investigations supporting the evaluation of emotional responses within a virtual environment, according to a three-dimensional (Valence, Arousal, and Dominance) model of affects, developed in the 1970s and 1980s. To populate this three-dimensional model with participants’ emotional responses, an “affective VR,” capable of manipulating users’ emotions, has been designed and subjectively evaluated. The VR takes the form of a dynamic “speedboat” simulation, elements (controllable VR parameters) of which were assessed and selected based on a 35-respondent online survey, coupled with the implementation of an affective power approximation algorithm. A further 68 participants took part in a series of trials, interacting with a number of VR variations, while subjectively rating their emotional responses. The experimental results provide an early level of confidence that this particular affective VR is capable of manipulating individuals’ emotional experiences, through the control of its internal parameters. Moreover, the approximation technique proved to be fairly reliable in predicting users’ potential emotional responses, in various affective VR settings, prior to actual experiences. Finally, the analysis suggested that the emotional response of the users, with different gender and gaming experiences, could vary, when presented with the same affective VR situation.
Empathy performs a central role in regulating social relations. This applies equally to journalistic work routines. To explore the concept of empathy in the understanding of journalists, 46 interviews were conducted using a cross-cultural approach between the United Kingdom and India. It became clear that empathy occupies a central place in news production, fulfilling multiple roles. It serves to achieve a comprehensive access to information and to news protagonists at the interpersonal level. Without this “invisible” mode of communication, qualitative and ethical news journalism cannot be achieved; and the authenticity and emotionality of news packages would be diminished. Empathy varies on the individual level, but especially in sensitive journalistic work fields it represents a “naturally present” core skill for journalists. A final empathic dimension is found in the imaginary empathy towards the audience which provides essential guidance for journalistic news products. Cultural differences between India and the United Kingdom are apparent in this study, but results also indicate considerable similarities in the role of empathy in different journalism cultures.
The concept of presence, or “being there” is a frequently emphasized factor in immersive mediated environments. It is often assumed that greater levels of immersive quality elicit higher levels of presence, in turn enhancing the effectiveness of a mediated experience. To investigate this assumption the current meta-analysis synthesizes decades of empirical research examining the effect of immersive system technology on user experiences of presence. Aggregating 115 effect sizes from 83 studies, it finds that technological immersion has a medium-sized effect on presence. Additionally, results show that increased levels of user-tracking, the use of stereoscopic visuals, and wider fields of view of visual displays are significantly more impactful than improvements to most other immersive system features, including quality of visual and auditory content. These findings are discussed in light of theoretical accounts of the presence construct as well as practical implications for design.
This study explores the process of emotional labor in a profession in need of examination - that of journalism. During one-on-one interviews, newspaper/online journalists reflected upon their experiences while gathering the news and agreed they do indeed engage in emotional labor, suppressing impulses of sympathy, pity and guilt to achieve ‘objectivity’ and to avoid being overwhelmed by their feelings. However, our findings show that with little or no training in this practice and with the majority of journalists achieving not suppression but merely a deferment of upsetting emotions, emotional labor can have serious implications for those reporters who engage in it.
This paper studies the role of subjectivity in the language of award-winning journalism. The paper draws on a content analysis of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in a range of news categories between 1995 and 2011. The analysis indicates that despite the continued prominence of the ideal of objectivity in scholarly and journalistic debates, award-winning journalistic stories are in fact pervaded by subjective language in the form of what linguists refer to as “appraisals,” as well as the narrative construction of emotive appeals. The subjective language use of award-winning stories, however, does not straightforwardly or consistently undermine claims to objectivity. On that basis, the paper concludes that any binary oppositions between objectivity and subjectivity and, relatedly, emotionality and rationality, may be overly simplistic and obscure the complexities of journalistic story-telling.
Nowadays, the democratic (public) potential of popular journalism is seldom denied. Generally speaking, however, journalism is celebrated when it reports current affairs but denounced when it focuses on private or emotional matters. It is common knowledge in cultural studies that underneath this split between "popular" journalism and so called "quality" journalism lies a gendered and ethnocentric concept of "journalistic quality" and, I would add, of citizenship. Partly as a reaction to the widely discussed media presentation of a "wave" of child murders, partly as a result of research commissioned by the Dutch PBS NOS Gender Portrayal Department, I have developed an alternative notion of "public" or "civic" quality. In this article I hope to shed some light on the possibility of incorporating "emotions", "everyday life" and a "relative sense of self" into a more inclusive concept of public quality, media and citizenship.
SubStance 28.2 (1999) 110-137
Few of us have actually donned a HMD (head-mounted display) and DGs (data-gloves), and entered a computer-generated, three-dimensional landscape in which all of our wishes can be fulfilled: wishes such as experiencing an expansion of our physical and sensory powers; getting out of the body and seeing ourselves from the outside; adopting a new identity; apprehending immaterial objects with most of our senses, including touch; being able to modify the environment through either verbal commands or physical gestures; seeing creative thoughts instantly realized without going through the process of having them physically materialized.
Yet despite the fact that virtual reality as described above is still largely science fiction, still largely what it is called -- a virtual reality-- there is hardly anybody who does not have a passionate opinion about the technology : some day VR will replace reality; VR will never replace reality; VR challenges the concept of reality; VR will enable us to rediscover and explore reality; VR is a safe substitute to drugs and sex; VR is pleasure without risk and therefore immoral; VR will enhance the mind, leading mankind to new powers; VR is addictive and will enslave us; VR is a radically new experience; VR is as old as Paleolithic art; VR is basically a computer technology; all forms of representation create a VR experience; VR challenges the distinction fiction-reality; VR is the triumph of fiction over reality.
We may have to wait until the next millennium to see whether these promises and threats will be materialized, but since VR technology is depicted so realistically by its prophets, and since it exists very much in the popular imagination, we don't have to wait that long to submit the claims of its developers to a critical investigation. In this paper I propose to analyze VR as a semiotic phenomenon and to explore its implications for literary theory and the question of textuality.
My point of departure is this definition by Pimentel and Texeira: "In general, the term virtual reality refers to an immersive, interactive experience generated by a computer" (11). While "computer generated" accounts for the virtual character of the data, "immersive" and "interactive" explain what makes the computer-assisted experience an experience of reality. To apprehend a world as real is to feel surrounded by it, to be able to interact physically with it, and to have the power to modify this environment. The conjunction of immersion and interactivity leads to an effect known as telepresence : "A virtual reality is defined as a real or simulated environment in which the perceiver experiences telepresence" (Steuer 76). Telepresence relates to presence as virtual reality relates to reality :
Analyzing the dimensions of telepresence, Steuer (78) proposes a combination of factors that come very close to Pimentel and Texeira's formula: the sense of telepresence is a function of the vividness of the representation -- which leads to immersion -- and of interactive involvement with the electronic display.
As a literary theorist, I am primarily interested in the two components of the VR experience as a novel way to describe the types of reader response that may be elicited by a literary text. I propose therefore to transfer the notions of immersion and interactivity from the technological to the literary domain and to discuss the conditions of their textual implementation. While interactivity has been extolled by postmodern theory as the triumph of its own aesthetic ideals of a creative reader, an open text, and a ludic relation to language, immersion has been either ignored or dismissed as the holdover of a now-discredited aesthetics of illusion that subordinates language to its referent, and ignores its power of configuration over the reality it is supposed to represent. Through this comparative study of the immersive and interactive potential of literature and VR technology, I hope to pave the way for a more critical...
The design of an interactive narrative begins with the choice of a type of story. In this paper I examine the potential of three kinds of plot for active user participation: the epic plot, which focuses on the struggle of the individual to survive in a hostile world, the dramatic plot, which deals with the evolution of a network of human relations, and the epistemic plot, which is propelled by the desire to solve a mystery. I distinguish two basic types of immersion—ludic and narrative, the latter subdivided into spatial, temporal and emotional variants, and I discuss the ability of the three kinds of plot to generate these various forms of immersion.
This paper reviews the concepts of immersion and presence in virtual environments (VEs). We propose that the degree of immersion can be objectively assessed as the characteristics of a technology, and has dimensions such as the extent to which a display system can deliver an inclusive, extensive, surrounding, and vivid illusion of virtual environment to a participant. Other dimensions of immersion are concerned with the extent of body matching, and the extent to which there is a self-contained plot in which the participant can act and in which there is an autonomous response. Presence is a state of consciousness that may be concomitant with immersion, and is related to a sense of being in a place. Presence governs aspects of autonomic responses and higher-level behaviors of a participant in a VE. The paper considers single and multi-participant shared environments, and draws on the experience of Computer-Supported Cooperative Working (CSCW) research as a guide to understanding presence in shared environments, The paper finally outlines the aims of the FIVE Working Group, and the 1995 FIVE Conference in London, UK.
Walking in another’s virtual shoes: Do 360-degree video news stories generate empathy in viewers?
- D Archer
- K Finger
Emotion and Journalism
- K Wahl-Jorgensen
Viewing the Future? Virtual Reality in Journalism
- P Doyle
- M Gelman
- S Gill
VR for News: The New Reality?
- Z Watson
Insights into great virtual reality storytelling
- Z Watson
Ethics Guidelines for Immersive Journalism
- A L Sánchez Laws
- T Utne