Ethical Dilemmas of Immersive Journalism

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Virtual reality, 360° video, and augmented reality are powerful tools for storytelling, and can cause strong emotions among its users. In a panel at NordMedia2019, ViSmedia researchers addressed essential journalism dilemmas to be resolved when adapting and adopting these technologies.

The panel was called “Immersive Journalism: Critical Perspectives” and the conference was held in Malmö, Sweden, 21-23 August 2019. Nine researchers from five countries contributed to the panel, which was based on three ongoing research projects in Norway and Finland. According to the panel ́s definitions, immersive journalism refers to journalism which utilizes new digital media forms based on technologies such as 360°, virtual reality, augmented reality or mixed reality. The key to immersive experiences is that the user should have the freedom to hover in the virtual space as she or he wants. In the more complicated stories, the writing process resembles more the making of a game than conventional news narrative. Some prominent journalistic institutions such as the BBC, the Guardian, The New York Times and Euronews have started to regularly produce VR journalism, and new case studies from the newsrooms were presented. The most common experience for the larger audience has been 360°, spherical videos watched on smartphones, sometimes supplemented with Cardboard headsets or head-mounted displays. These technologies represent the newest frontiers for creativity and imagination, but there are still many bottlenecks for mass adoption.

The empathy machine
The researchers pointed out that Immersive journalism has been called an “empathy machine”, because of its audiovisual narratives that causes strong emotions among its users. The emotional power of immersive journalism raises new ethical questions that needs to be addressed. True enough, emotions have always been present in many journalistic works, especially in longer forms of storytelling, nonfictional human-interest stories and TV-documentaries. Crisis reporting has also traditionally offered emotional experiences for the audience. But the basic norm of keeping distance from all the sufferings has been strong in journalism. Since immersive journalism involves many more human senses and appeals to emotional sensibilities as well as reason, it poses a special challenge to the distinction between visual manipulation and journalistic influence.

Turo Uskali,. PhD, Head of Journalism at the Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

Turo Uskali,. PhD, Head of Journalism at the Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

Deborah Johnson, Professor, University of Virginia.

Deborah Johnson, Professor, University of Virginia.

Immersive journalism invites the audiences to experience a real-world situation more intensively and more intimately than other technologies. Even if research on the long-time effects of immersive journalism is still in an early phase, it can already be argued that there is a special need for health instructions, several panelists emhasized. Virtual reality experiences have already proved to cause loss of spatial awareness, dizziness and simulator sickness. Simultaneously, the use of virtual reality technologies has potential for bringing people together at local as well as global scales, and for global understanding and civic engagement. Summed up, Immersive journalism shows great promise, but also has a great potential for abuse, and raises issues of credibility. The ethical and social issues that it raises have to do with the power of the Immersive experience to manipulate individuals.

The researchers
The original research for the panel sprang from three research projects: “Engaging Services in Virtual Reality (Virjox)” and “Emotions and Responsibility in Immersive Journalism” (EMORES) at the University of Tampere and the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and “Exploring the Social Implications of Visual Surveillance Technologies in the News Media” (ViSmedia) at the University of Bergen, Norway. The data presented at the Nordmedia2019 also comprised the fundamentals of an edited volume on immersive journalism to be released by Routledge in April 2020.

The following researchers contributed to the panel:

  • Turo Uskali and Pasi Ikonen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

  • Astrid Gynnild and Siri Flatlandsmo, University of Bergen, Norway

  • Esa Sirkkunen and Heli Väätäjä, University of Tampere, Finland

  • Deborah G Johnson, University of Virginia, USA

  • Jorge Vázquez-Herrero, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

  • Sarah Jones, Birmingham City University

Thomas Wold