Going Beyond the Classic News Narrative Convention: The Background to and Challenges of Immersion in Journalism

Abstract

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.

Innovation in European public broadcasters: immersive narratives and organization of 360-degree contents on digital platforms

“…The format with an increased presence in the media, due to its low cost and production time, is the 360º video (Hardee & McMahan, 2017;European Broadcasting Union, 2017a), also called cinematic VR (Domínguez, 2017) and motion sphere (Longhi, 2016;Doyle, Gelman & Gill, 2016). These products are based on "a 360-degree rotations of video" (Kool, 2016: 4) where, in consequence, the user shall enjoy the ambient or real sound and could make a rotary motion -although limited, as they are at a fixed location on the stage-, and thus look from top to bottom and from left to right.…”

“…While both typologies of immersive products are very different as regards production, 360º videos and CG-content offer, to a greater or lesser extent, resources to increase the feeling of exploration of news' scenarios (Domínguez, 2017).…”

“…In this last case, when the immersive piece is a 360º video, users do not access as avatars -as an animation would undermine credibility to the recorded action-; it is used a subjective camera. The cinematographic resource consists of simulating that the figures of the audiovisual piece talk to, look at and address to the user, pretending that the user is actually on the filmed scene (Domínguez, 2017).…”

“…In an attempt to enrich a multimedia language that has become routine and common for an increasingly infoxicated audience, 360º video and VR techniques emerge as an option (Baía, 2016;Hardee, 2016) in news' production. The action, closely linked to the impact of videogames as a growing cultural industry (Domínguez, 2017) and to the gamification of sectors (Longhi, 2016;Kapp, 2012;Domínguez, 2015), has involved a radical change in storytelling.…”

“…Nevertheless, the reasons-why of the momentum of 360º videos, also known as cinematic VR (Domínguez, 2017) and spherical pieces in movement (Longui, 2016;Doyle, Gelman & Gill, 2016), http://www.revistalatinacs.org/073paper/1299/58en.html Página 1124 are mainly their lower total cost and their possibilities of immediacy when compared with contents generated synthetically with computer with VR, as well as the democratisation of their access among consumers thanks to the proliferation in the market of low cost virtual reality glasses (Hardee & McMahan, 2017). Google Cardboard is the most paradigmatic example in this regard.…”