Immersed in the news. How VR and 360-degree video have triggered a shift in journalistic storytelling

Immersive media and social change: The ‘empathy machine’ is dead, long live ‘emotional geography’!

“…Nonetheless, it should be noted that the entire research process was guided by certain ethical principles based on established ethical guidelines relating to qualitative research (Orb, Eisenhauer and Wynaden, 2001), ranging from the most fundamental ethical principles, such as compassion and minimizing the risk of eventual harm to participants, but also obtaining informed consent from research participants, protecting their anonymity and confidentiality, and giving participants the right to withdraw from the research at any time. In short, central to a consistent ethical approach is "whether the research participants' subjective meanings, actions and social contexts, as understood by them, are illuminated."…”

“…Although the first experiments with immersive journalism were at the intersection of journalistic narrative and virtual scenarios using computer-generated imagery to depict such narratives (e.g., Nonny de la Peña's seminal 2012 The Hunger is Los Angeles), but also using augmented reality as a tool for audiences to connect with news stories in an unprecedented way (Tejedor-Calvo et al, 2020;Aitamurto et al, 2022), the fact is that the overall body of work of immersive journalism mostly makes use of 360° video to "transport" people inside news stories, i.e. the so-called "as if you were there" experience, triggered by the holistic combination of the feelings of immersion and presence (Vaz and Tejedor, 2019;Pérez-Seijo, Gracia and Reis, 2022;Baía Reis, Kick and Oliveto, 2023). Most of these 360° news stories transport the audience to remote or inaccessible places and situations drenched with social significance.…”

Immersive Journalism: The Effect of System Immersion on Place Illusion and Co-Presence in 360-Degree Video Reporting

“…There are also proposals of new models and frameworks for the ideation and design of immersive experiences by practitioners [11,[34][35][36][37]. In terms of the construction of the news story, some scholars have also focused on the specificities demanded by the 360-degree video, concluding that despite the opportunities that the format introduces for journalistic production and consumption, many media outlets fell into the technological hype and pushed the special narrative and immersiveness demanded by the spherical video to the background [38].…”

“…Directional Cues are posed as a non-invasive solution that helps to guide users without negatively affecting the feeling of presence [72]. However, guiding the user in the immersive news scene becomes a paradox: the need to direct the user to explore the whole scene without losing relevant information confronts the freedom of exploration, a core value associated with the foundational idea of immersive journalism and the first-person experience of the news events [38].…”