Digital Journalism

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Virtual Reality and Journalism

A gateway to conceptualizing immersive journalism

António Baía Reis & António Fernando Vasconcelos Cunha Castro Coelho

To cite this article: António Baía Reis & António Fernando Vasconcelos Cunha Castro
Coelho (2018) Virtual Reality and Journalism, Digital Journalism, 6:8, 1090-1100, DOI:
10.1080/21670811.2018.1502046

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 VIRTUAL REALITY AND JOURNALISM
A gateway to conceptualizing
immersive journalism

nio Ba
ıa Reis

Anto
nio Fernando Vasconcelos
and Anto
Cunha Castro Coelho

Immersion is a state of altered consciousness—not the prim suspension of disbelief, but

its joyous capsizing. Since approximately 2012, a new ecosystem of immersive virtual
reality technologies and experiments has emerged. In this emerging ecosystem, journal-
ism is still a minor component. Nevertheless, media outlets such as The New York
Times, BBC or ABC News have been producing virtual reality news stories. This led to
the advent of immersive journalism, not only as a media phenomenon, but also as an
academic concept. Drawing on some notions and concepts like the definitions of
immersive journalism, immersion and presence, as well as some examples of the rela-
tion between journalism practices and visual media, we analyse, reflect and provide a
general overview about the main concepts, uses, opportunities and limits of immersive
journalism. Thus, the main goal of this article is to provide a theoretical and conceptual
gateway that serves as a starting point for immersive journalism future academic and
industry endeavours.

KEYWORDS digital journalism; immersion; immersive journalism; journalism

practices; presence; virtual reality; visual media

Introduction
Immersive journalism results from new technological capabilities made possible
by deep progress in the field of virtual reality. In the last few years, institutions such as
The New York Times, the BBC or ABC News have been producing journalistic content
based on immersive technologies, namely the 360
video.
Combining the possibility of recording immersive videos with the dissemination
of content through mobile devices is something particularly innovative in regard to the
way news is presented and experienced. From an academic perspective, this phenom-
enon also presents substantial potential for exploration, not only from the standpoint
of those who see immersive journalism as an object of study in the specific field of
content production and reception, but also specially from the perspective of those who
study and evaluate how this new reality intersects with other domains such as journal-
ism studies, communications sciences and digital media. Problems like work ethics, nar-
rative structures and professional and technical skills need to be discerned to clearly

Digital Journalism, 2018

Vol. 6, No. 8, 1090–1100, https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2018.1502046
# 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 VIRTUAL REALITY AND JOURNALISM 1091

understand this emerging phenomenon and its real implications for journalism, aca-
demia and society.
In that sense, the aim of this paper is precisely to establish a theoretical-conceptual
construct that might ground a framework that can be used in upcoming studies related
to immersive journalism. To that end, and drawing from some theoretical assumptions
like De la Pen~ a et al.’s (2010) concept of immersive journalism, we describe and contem-
plate the essential concepts associated with immersive journalism, such as immersion
(Witmer and Singer 1998) and presence (Kim and Biocca 1997). At a second stage, we
present a historical view of the relation between journalism and visual media using prac-
tical examples, such as Martha Gellhorn’s war journalism (Gellhorn 1994; David 2013)—in
the context of World War 2—or George Plimpton’s sports journalism from the 60s
(Dawidoff 2009), in order to understand the relevance of using different forms of immer-
sion when seeking to create an effective connection between news and their audiences.
Finally, we present a brief description and analysis regarding immersive journalism’s
main challenges and dynamics, somewhat foreseeing future configurations and suggest-
ing possible topics for upcoming academic research projects.

Immersive Journalism or Journalism “as If You Were There”:

A Theoretical-Conceptual Matrix
The temporal co-occurrence of immersion and interactivity is the cornerstone of
virtual reality. Virtual reality is not just telepresence or augmented reality, nor is it even
any sort of specific hardware (Burdea and Coiffet 2003), it is rather a simulation that
uses graphic computing to create virtual worlds with realistic aspects and configura-
tions that respond to user inputs, such as gestures or voice commands. It is precisely
real-time interactivity that defines the essence of virtual reality, i.e. the computer
detects user inputs and immediately reconfigures the virtual world.
In order to think over and understand immersive journalism, one must specifically
consider the implications of virtual reality for the field of human interaction, namely in
what concerns the multiple processes involved in visual representations, such as
technological implications for self-perception, the factors that contribute to a greater
sensation of “presence” and the impact of virtual reality on memory and social stereo-
types (Aronson-Rath et al. 2015). Moreover, Aronson-Rath et al. (2015) suggest that
immersive journalism is widely inspired by the so-called Social Presence Theory, as
described by Short, Williams, and Christie (1976), in the sense that the interlocutors of
online-mediated discourses have the ability to project “social cues” that provide and
trigger a certain degree of social presence in their dialogues and interactions.
Ultimately, Short, Williams, and Christie (1976) provided us with a reflection on
the higher or lower degree of presence that mass media enables (for example, video is
classified as having a higher degree of presence and audio as having a lesser one,
although this could be subjectively questioned). They also suggest that social presence
embodies two fundamental and interconnected dimensions in itself: “intimacy” and
“immediacy.” It is largely through these two dimensions that immersive journalism is
influenced and expands in the context of the theory of social presence. Moreover, it is
clear that the emergence and growing popularity of immersive journalism—both in its
theoretical and practical dimensions—is in a large sense provided and enabled by the
1092 A. BA
IA REIS AND A. F. V. C. C. COELHO

combination, for example of the illusions of presence, plausibility and the appropriation
of the virtual body, a phenomenon designated by some researchers as “avatar anthro-
pomorphism” (Lugrin, Latt, and Latoschik 2015).
The truth is that virtual reality has been widely studied in scientific fields such as
sociology and psychology, mainly as it relates to phenomena such as intrapersonal and
interpersonal relations and human emotions (Coffey et al. 2013). On the other hand,
the majority of the studies undertaken on virtual reality did not establish an intersec-
tion with journalism or the communication sciences. The emergence of immersive jour-
nalism responds exactly to this need, in the sense that it fundamentally explores the
potentialities resulting from journalistic experiences in virtual reality, and mostly its
greater or lesser capacity to replicate real emotions, feelings and memories in a new
way of experiencing news.

The Concept of Immersive Journalism

Talking about immersive journalism means talking about Nonny de la Pen ~ a, cur-
rently a researcher at USC—Annenberg School of Journalism and founder and CEO of
an immersive content production company. De la Pen ~ a is considered among both
scholars and media professionals as the academic pioneer of immersive journalism, as
a result of her pioneering research in the field of immersive journalistic experiences,
employing virtual reality technologies (some examples of her work include “Hunger in
~a et al. (2010), immersive jour-
Los Angeles” and “Project Syria”). According to De la Pen
nalism is the “production of news in a form in which people can gain first person expe-
riences of the events or situations described in news stories.” In this sense, immersive
journalism allows its users an embodied experience, effectively entering a virtual world
in which news stories are recreated.
The fundamental idea of immersive journalism is to allow the participant to actually
enter a virtually recreated scenario representing the news story. The participant will
be typically represented in the form of a digital avatar—an animated 3D digital
representation of the participant, and see the world from the first-person perspective
~a et al. 2010)
of that avatar. (De la Pen

Moreover, De la Pen~a et al. (2010) argue that one of the essential goals of immer-
sive journalism should be its ability to become increasingly immersive, something she
describes as “deep immersive journalism,” that is the creation of immersive journalism
experiences that provide users with increasingly higher degrees of immersion and pres-
ence. In this regard, deep immersive journalism provides us a greater and broader bod-
ily, spatial and temporal involvement when “experiencing” the news recreated in the
virtual world. This sensation of deep immersion is aligned with the concepts proposed
by Biocca and Delaney (1995) on immersion in virtual reality:
[Virtual reality immersion is defined by the] degree to which a virtual environment
submerges the perceptual system of the user in computer-generated stimuli. The
more the system captivates the sense and blocks out stimuli from the physical
world, the more the system is considered immersive. (Biocca and Delaney 1995)

In other words, the greater the ability of a system to block external stimuli, the
more effective the internal stimuli will be, as well as the degree of immersion
 VIRTUAL REALITY AND JOURNALISM 1093

experienced by users. Moreover, and as mentioned before, it is through the integrated

combination of illusions of presence, plausibility and appropriation of the virtual body
that immersive journalism amasses the ability to trigger a sensation of being in a “real
place, reliving real stories, with real bodies” (Witt et al. 2016). The phenomenon refer-
enced by Witt et al. (2016) is so recurring that De la Pen ~a et al. (2010) call it “response-
as-if-real” or “RAIR.”
Thus, people who experience immersive journalism express similar or close
reactions to those that they would express if they were living those experiences in the
first-person, even being fully conscious that what they are seeing and hearing is not
happening in real time.
Bearing in mind the theoretical outline presented thus far, one could say that, to
have a basic understanding of this paper’s object of study, one must consider two fun-
damental concepts—immersion and presence—both profoundly related to the sensa-
tion of experiencing an alternate reality.

The Concept of Immersion

Witmer and Singer (1998) describe immersion as the sensation of being involved,
included, and/or in interaction with a digital environment. According to these authors,
there are four essential elements that affect this sensation: “(1) the isolation in the
physical environment; (2) the perception of feeling included in the virtual environment;
(3) the state of ‘natural’ interactions and of control perception; (4) the perception of
moving within the virtual environment.”
Scholars such as Slater and Wilbur (1997), more aligned with so-called techno-
logical determinism, propose that immersion should be considered both a product and
an outcome of technology, i.e. that immersion should be understood as a means by
“which a computerized system is capable of offering to the user the illusion of reality
at once being: (1) inclusive, (2) vast, (3) surrounding and (4) vivid.” In other words,
immersion is hereby defined as the sensation of experiencing an alternate reality that
is objectively provided by virtual reality technologies.
When it comes to immersive journalism, a concept of immersion that comprises
and combines technological dimensions with others related to the study of behaviours
and emotions would appear more adequate for an academic and more holistic appro-
priation of this phenomenon.

The Concept of Presence

If virtual environments provide an intense feeling of immersion, that intensity
may occur at a level of presence feeling. In this sense, let us consider the latter concept
as being fundamentally concomitant with immersion for a full and effective experience
of immersive journalism. We might roughly define presence as the sensation of “being
there.” Kim and Biocca (1997) suggest that presence assumes an almost instantaneous
combination of the sense of “departure” from the immediate and physical world, and
of “arrival” to a virtual one. In other words, it is the subjective sensation of being in a
created scenario represented by a determined environment, which is usually a virtual
1094 A. BA
IA REIS AND A. F. V. C. C. COELHO

one (Barfield et al. 1995). Heeter (1992) goes a bit further and proposes a three-dimen-
sional typification of presence:
(1) Environmental presence: environmental presence represents the extent to which
the virtual environment reacts as a function of the person during virtual immersion
and as a function of the person’s own reactions versus his/her actions; (2) Social
presence: Social presence exists only if many people co-exist in the same virtual
environment. The presence of other people offers additional evidence that the
environment truly “exists” and fosters the experience of strong presence. These
people can also be represented by avatars; (3) Personal presence: personal presence
corresponds to the feelings of being present in a virtual environment as well as to
the reasons invoked by the individual to explain this phenomenon. (Heeter 1992)

By highlighting and acknowledging that there might be sensations of presence

at the environmental, personal and social levels, Heeter (1992) foresees a scenario that,
in our understanding, might acquire tangible forms in future experiences of immersive
journalism, that is, we would not be able to assume that immersive journalism will be
limited to unipersonal experiences, thus encompassing eventual situations where sev-
eral persons might “experience” news at the same time. This grounds and strengthens
the validity and operationalization of the concept of presence in its several dimensions
when we embrace the study of immersive journalism.
In truth, the concept of presence has been fuelling academic discussion and
debate across several fields of knowledge, and a global and comprehensive theory com-
prising the multiple views of presence has yet to be defined. In the context of immersive
journalism, we think that it is important to understand which are specifically the charac-
teristics and operations that contribute to create and trigger the sensation of presence.

Journalism and Visual Media

The theoretical-conceptual outline designed so far allows us to understand that an
integrated reflection on immersive journalism should be based on the operationalization
of both immersion and presence concepts. However, immersion and presence are not
exclusive or endogenous to virtual reality experiences. In this regard, we find relevance
in considering some journalistic practices that, although far from being related to or gen-
erated by virtual reality technologies, are relevant examples of creating a sensation of
immersion in their stories, something that we could call “narrative visualism.”
In other words, one of journalism’s basic goals is to create an affective relation-
ship between the public and the news; therefore, associating this relation to different
forms of immersion is not something that has only emerged with immersive journalism,
it is rather an older phenomenon. Let us consider a few examples.
During World War II, Martha Gellhorn—notorious American writer and journalist,
considered to be one of the most prominent war reporters of the twentieth century—
calls her reporting of news and events “The view from the ground” (Gellhorn 1994).
This designation already suggests a feeling of immersion in itself. Breaking with journal-
istic practices of the time (which expected objective and immediate coverage from war
correspondents), Martha Gellhorn provided coverage in a deepened and highly descrip-
tive fashion, awakening a sensation of immersion in her audience. David’s (2013)
description of Gellhorn appears to us as quite representative:
 VIRTUAL REALITY AND JOURNALISM 1095

Without fearing the dangers and risks she was taking, Gellhorn was looking to find
out how war was changing people’s everyday life ( … ) She was visiting houses,
hospitals and prisons. She listened to stories, dreams, human tragedies. She wanted
to show the weak and the oppressed, the unheard voices. Gellhorn is a storyteller
that rebuilds the past and relives the human tragedies of people that suffer from the
consequences of war. (David 2013)

We find another example in George Plimpton, an American writer and sports jour-
nalist who temporarily joined the Detroit Lions football team in the 1960s. Through this
experiment, Plimpton wanted to provide his readers with a greater insight and more pro-
found sensation of what it really felt like to be a player on that team (Plimpton 2003).
With his characteristic insight and wit, the Harvard-educated Plimpton recounts his
experiences in successfully talking his way into training camp—not as a reporter but
as a player—with the Detroit Lions, practicing with the team, and actually taking
snaps behind center in a preseason game. (Dawidoff 2009)

Another relevant example involves journalist and CBS News anchor Walter
Cronkite, when in the late 50s he produced “You are there!”—a documentary show
where real CBS journalists reported historical narratives as if they were happening and
transmitted live on TV.
No one had a voice like Walter Cronkite’s, one that combined riveting drama and
authority. You never tired of hearing it. Back in the 1950’s, Cronkite, in addition to
his news duties, hosted two absorbing TV series. One was called You Are There, and
it reenacted significant events of the past; only in this case, Cronkite would ask
questions of the key players. One episode that sticks in my mind was his interview
with Mary, Queen of Scots before her execution. Sounds hokey, perhaps, but it
worked. (Forbes 2009)

Looking at these three examples, we might say that immersive journalism is one
of the most recent actors in the timeline of visual media, especially in what concerns
the specific ways that these visual media influenced journalism.
Now let us consider now the case of photojournalism. Since the 20s through the
late 70s, photography had a central role as a medium. It was through photography
that journalists reached their public and showed their interest in reporting on the most
relevant news of the world. In this sense, photojournalists held an absolute power over
their own work tool and consequent outcome, being both the first and last decision-
makers over what to frame with their cameras. Each photograph contains a single con-
struction of information, meanings and senses. Thus, we might say that each photo
provides a unique sensation of immersion.
During the 70s, television became dominant and photojournalism and other trad-
itional media formats eventually began to lose their preponderance. From the 70s until
the beginning of the 90s, television globally and definitively cemented its position as
the predominant medium (Benthall 1993). But it does not last long; in the beginning of
the 90s, journalism is again surprised by the technological achievements in computer
science. The Internet progresses quickly, generating the swift and prolific massification
of video access, as well as new forms of interactive media, which would acquire differ-
ent forms of expression over the years—CD-ROM, websites, blogs, social media and
mobile platforms.
1096 A. BA
IA REIS AND A. F. V. C. C. COELHO

Looking to more recent phenomena, we might say that so-called immersive

storytelling—a practice that combines video, audio, and photography, and which,
according to Willis (2003), has the potential to bring readers or viewers even closer to
the truth—is surely an example of something very close to immersive journalism in
conceptual terms, although it does not encompass the use of virtual reality technolo-
gies. A thorough analysis of immersive storytelling might be useful in order to figure
out that some of its features could be emulated for adaption and integration in the
narrative structures of immersive journalism.
Bearing the aforementioned examples in mind, the existence of a solid historical
relationship between journalism and the several forms of providing audiences with a
greater sensation of immersion and presence in the news is indisputable. This historical
retrospective exercise is fundamental to understanding the place of immersive journal-
ism in the wider context of journalism and communication studies and practices, so
that we can better comprehend its current dynamics and foresee its eventual (and
potential) configurations.

Some Conclusions and Considerations

According to Speir (2015):
The use of virtual reality journalism, or the use of immersive 3-D devices for
experiential storytelling, adds to the visceral experiences of users as it heightens
senses through mesmerizing 360-degree views and intense audio, similar to
experiencing an event in its location, real-time (Speir 2015)

Owen (2015), who did a research project about the uses of virtual reality in jour-
nalism, predicts the importance of immersive journalism in the near future:
In the next year [2016] VR will emerge as a consumer product and we know that
movies and gaming and all these things are going to be using it, but what’s
increasingly apparent is that journalism will be using it too ( … ) If the goal of
journalism is to bring an audience to another place or to experience the life of
someone else, or to tell the story, then the ability to take them there in this 360, 3-D
environment is incredibly powerful. (Owen 2015)

Both Speir (2015) and Owen (2015) seem sure that the use of virtual reality tech-
nologies in journalism—or any other form of immersive experience—is something pro-
foundly innovative, and will be one of the future pathways to experience contents in a
more “visceral,” “powerful” way. In fact, by the end of 2016, most of the major media
outlets have adopted some form of immersive journalism—mainly 360
video—into
their workflow.
In an opposite way, we might suggest that immersive journalism, although advo-
cating a unique and extremely innovative form of experiencing news, might stray from
what defines it, i.e. being journalism. In other words, immersive journalism is above all
else journalism. While in the last few years some immersive journalism experiments
have been conducted—both in academia and in industry—just a few questions have
emerged from an academic point of view, such as the singularities, potential and chal-
lenges for the journalistic practices (Ludlow and Wallace 2007; Brennen and Cerna
2010). Most of the studies focus on the comparison of traditional media with forms of
 VIRTUAL REALITY AND JOURNALISM 1097

journalistic production in virtual environments. In this sense, we find it relevant to

undertake a reflexive and comprehensive study not just on the potential and promise
of immersive journalism as an emerging and innovative practice, but also on its impli-
cations at some levels. For example, the structural changes it brings to journalistic prac-
tices, i.e. how it adds to, furthers or even compromises traditional journalism.
Brenner (2016) seems to provide an integrated and coherent view of this phe-
nomenon. Brenner (2016) understands not only the potential of this emerging practice,
but also raises the alert for some issues, which are more pragmatic and oriented by the
praxis of traditional journalism. According to Brenner (2016), the mindset of both trad-
itional media journalists and immersive journalists should always comprehend the fol-
lowing questions: (1) “What best serves my story?”; (2) “How do I balance quality and
time?”; and (3) “What is the best delivery platform for my story?” To this roster of ques-
tions, we might even add the following: What is the ethical and deontological frame-
work of immersive journalism? Should it be the same framework that guides traditional
journalism practices, or is it necessary to create and structure ethical and deontological
guidelines adapted to this emerging practice? In other words, what are the vital and
pressing theoretical questions around the ethics and politics of immersive journalism?
According to Kool (2016), immersive journalism is filled with many intricate eth-
ical dilemmas due to the nature of virtual reality technology:
At this turning point in technology at the journalistic crux of the opinions, ideas, and
events of today’s world, it is important to think about the implications of this
advancement and how it could change the transmission, the reception, and the
understanding of news around the world. (Kool 2016)

Jones (2017) argues that immersive journalism requires a framework to guarantee

that ethics and privacy codes are not compromised: “Despite the advances in this new
space, we have not stepped back to address the forms in which 360-degree stories are
being produced.” Jones (2017) also argues that:
Immersive journalism offers the viewer the opportunity to become a reporter, to
become immersed in a news event and make decisions about what they see and
hear themselves ( … ) The viewing experience is determined by the audience and
which way they decide to look or focus their attention. However, without
interactivity in a narrative, as identified earlier, the narrative is still led by the
reporter and the framing can be construed accordingly. (Jones 2017)

This lack of interactivity also raises ethical questions, in the same way as trad-
itional journalism does when, e.g. selecting images or sound-bites to convey a story.
Regardless of these ethical conundrums, some studies demonstrate the ability of
immersive journalism to elicit emotions in a powerful way (Constine 2015). Milk (2015)
advocates that through immersive journalism people “feel empathy for people that are
very different than us and worlds completely foreign from our own.” Moreover, Laws
(2017) argues:
It seems that some strands of immersive journalism are beginning to meet the
requirements which enable us to witness the emotions of others and to thereby feel
empathy for them ( … ) The promise of an ethical an empathy-oriented immersive
journalism is exciting. (Laws 2017)
1098 A. BA
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All of this highlights the need to develop more research on the potential roles,
responsibilities and consequences of immersive journalism, specifically the ones around
ethics and audience emotional involvement. For now, we might say that, for instance, if
the medium was the message in traditional journalism, the audience will necessarily have
to be the message in immersive journalism. Thus, and according to Latar and Nordfors
(2009), immersive journalism could be considered a phenomenon that is defined in its
very essence by the relationship between journalism and its audience, rather than being
defined by its relationship with the media it uses to communicate with the audience.
By allowing the audience to experience and interact with news from a first-per-
son perspective, immersive journalism is a phenomenon that distinguishes itself from
other media. Just as the transition from analogue to digital transmission generated a
digital revolution, comparable in its scale to the “Press Revolution” coined by
Gutenberg five centuries before, virtual reality might be triggering today what we
could call a post-digital or meta-digital media revolution.
To conclude, we find it undeniable that immersive journalism, due to its inherent
condition of innovation, is a phenomenon that deserves to be studied within academia.
The world of today is immersed in a truly digital ecosystem where, for example, so-called
narrowcasting is an increasingly concrete reality, where the consumption of news is
something even more personalized and adapted to individual needs, predispositions
and emotional patterns. It is by considering this broad context, i.e. a context character-
ized by data-driven journalism, by the proliferation of visualization information, by media
business models created and oriented based on data sets, and by the “platformization”
of news, that we believe immersive journalism should be pondered and explored.
Will immersive journalism become a truly “empathic machine” (Milk 2015) that
will connect people and news narratives in a unique way, a tool for the re-humaniza-
tion of the media? Or is immersive journalism nothing more than the result of techno-
logical hype that, thanks precisely to its imminently technical condition, will stray in
such a way from journalistic practices that it could be incoherently called journalism?
The aim of this paper—which results from a first academic approach on immersive
journalism—is to ignite responses to these and other critical questions. Therefore, our
ultimate expectation is that the concepts and debate presented here could be a gate-
way or a theoretical-argumentative matrix to sustain future research in this field.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

FUNDING
Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. PhD Research Fellowship [GRANT/
AWARD NUMBER: PD/BD/128228/2016].

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nio Ba
ıa Reis (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), UT

Anto
AustinjPortugal International CoLab, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal.
E-mail: abaiareis@fe.up.pt. ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-745n1-1725

nio Fernando Vasconcelos Cunha Castro Coelho, INESC TEC and DEI/
Anto
Faculty of Engineering, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal. E-mail:
acoelho@fe.up.pt. ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7949-2877