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Reading Response: Immersive Journalism: Immersive Virtual Reality for the First-Person Experience

Updated: May 1, 2018

Immersive Journalism: Immersive Virtual Reality for the First-Person Experience of News by Peggy Well, Joan Llobera, Elias Giannoulos, Ausias Pomes, Berhard Splang. Doron Friedman


This paper discusses the concept of immersive journalism and the implications it has on journalism and the presentation of news media. The paper discusses the current understanding of avatars in virtual spaces and the feelings and perceptions that support immersive experiences. The paper intends to open up discussion and questions about new research into the representation of news and non-fiction.

Johnathon Dube states that immersive journalism can bring the viewer closer to the truth by giving them a bigger image of the story and enter the recreated scenario.

This is explained by a substitution of the human view as the avatar and being conscious of its or their shadows and movement in space.


“Gone Gitmo” is a VR experiencial representation of the Guatananamo Bay prison in a spatial narrative where the viewer is confronted with real life footage of detainees in the prison that was released by the U.S Department of Defense. This videography emphasises the narrative and sense of immersion of the virtual game.

Second Life is providing novel educational games where a part of their world is offsetting their carbon footprint. In the game they are followed by a carbon cloud which calculates their daily consumptions footprint on the earth, they are also in close contact with companies where they can participate and be educated in the economies large waste markets. This is what they call interactive journalism in the reading and what they explain is usually entering a user immersive, digital representation of data.

In the reading they explain that it is most interesting in virtual spaces that the user acts realistically within the spaces they see virtually. Their socially conditioned behaviour is transported with them in the space, so if for example a user came across a road, the user would stop to see if anything was coming, much like they would in real life. This is what they call in the reading RAIR (response-as-if-real). They explain that recently this perception of presence in a space is more of an illusional space and the two terms have been used to explore the difference between physical presence and perception of presence. They also speak about the research in illusional presence in space and the understanding of ownership over a virtual body. They explain the the brain has a high level of plasticity in the representation of the body and that it is not difficult to reproduce the sense of distortion or additional limbs to the mind in virtual space. They explain how these techniques are used to harness the immersivity and ownership over the experience in virtual space.


It is argued the sensorimotor contingencies are parallel to the way that humans interpret and move through virtual spaces. This is explained that in virtual spaces that afford the distinction of physical movements that result in realistic results eg. Moving your head to get a greater view of the area, relates to a persons perception of a really lived experience. This is the main argument that suggests that motion tracking in Virtual Realities is far more immersive than anything on a 2 dimensional screen. Place illusion is what they explain to be this experience.

Another example of how you may react in a virtual scene is if you were just about to park your car illegally, but as you pull up to the curb you see a police officer around the corner and your heart starts beating in effort to think about how you can avoid the implication of your inorderly act. For a moment the implication is real, the way that you would assume it would in real life. This explains how your social queues follow you in virtual space and how you relate the conclusions of your actions to one in the real world. Plausability is another impacting factor in immersive experiences that they explain to be essential to the result of immersive journalism. They also question that if this is so, you could assume that the reaction of the participants would be different in all scenarios much like it would be in real life.


In the reading they explain a experiment they did with the immersive journalistic piece about guatanomo bay. They explained that they got the participant to sit on a chair where they were told to sit with their hands behind their back and not move their body bar their head, much like the video had portrayed the avatars experience. This enhancement of bodily movement paried with the imagery presented lead to discomfort and and stress.


“Immersive Journalism: Immersive Virtual Reality for the First-Person Experience of News | Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments | MIT Press Journals.” Accessed April 2, 2018. https://www-mitpressjournals-org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/doi/abs/10.1162/PRES_a_00005.

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