Immersive journalism

Immersive Journalism is a form of journalism production that allows first person experience of the events or situations described in news reports and documentary film. Using 3D gaming and immersive technologies that create a sense of "being there" and offer the opportunity to personally engage with a story, immersive journalism puts an audience member directly into the event. By accessing a virtual version of the location where the story is occurring as a witness/participant, or by experiencing the perspective of a character depicted in the news story, the audience could be afforded unprecedented access to the sights and sounds, and even the feelings and emotions, which accompany the news.

Well-crafted journalism always aims to elicit a connection between the audience and the news story. Creating that connection via different kinds of ‘immersion’ has long been considered ideal. Describing her reporting during World War II, reporter Martha Gellhorn called it ‘The view from the ground’. Writer George Plimpton actually joined the Detroit Lions American football team in order to give his readers the most intimate sense of playing in this team. Television news correspondent Walter Cronkite made a series of documentaries recreating historical events where he would offer a brief introduction before an announcer would give the date and the event, proclaiming, ‘You Are There!’ More recently, attempts to combine audio, video and photographs on the Internet have created what some journalists call ‘immersive storytelling.’ As technology editor at MSNBC, Jonathan Dube, said that he believes this can bring the reader or viewer ‘closer to the truth’.

Immersive journalism constructs allow the audience to enter a virtually recreated scenario representing the story. The pieces are constructed as CGI (computer graphic imagery) virtual environments which can be inserted into persistent online virtual worlds, such as Second Life or a web-based UNITY game engine environment and viewed conventionally on a monitor or in fully immersive systems such as a CAVE or head-tracked and head-mounted display systems (HMD). Head and body tracking can be achieved by any number of commercial systems, including inexpensive consumer-end products, which makes this a viable and growing field. (For more on how virtual reality can create a sense of presence and connection to a virtual body, see and)

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