Virtual Hype Meets Reality : users’ perception of immersive journalism

Master’s Thesis:

Virtual Hype Meets Reality:

Users’ perception of immersive journalism

Author: Søren Lund Nielsen

Student number: 11300485

Supervisor: Penny Sheets Thibaut

Graduate School of Communication, University of Amsterdam MA Erasmus Mundus Master: Journalism, Media & Globalization

Abstract

Despite a vibrant discourse around the use of virtual reality technology in journalism, little research attention has been given to its potential users. Using the focus group method, this study takes the first step to discover what media users think of immersive journalism and its uses, benefits and pitfalls. Participants in the groups were exposed to recent journalistic productions designed to be experienced through VR-viewers and asked to share their thoughts, feelings, ideas, opinions within a uses and gratifications framework. The subsequent thematic analysis showed six identified gratifications: immersion, transportation, emotion, empathy, information and control. Additionally, the research found that although users have clear reservations about the technology, they do see a great potential in the use of VR for journalism. VR will never be the only way they will consume journalism, but if done correctly, it is believed that it can add great value to almost any journalistic production. The results have implications for VR interested media houses and journalists who wants to understand potential users better, and for media researchers who should use the findings to take the next important steps for understanding VR in journalism from an audience perspective.

Virtual Hype Meets Reality: Users’ perception of immersive journalism

Over the last few years, an increasing hype over the use of virtual reality technology in journalism has emerged (Doyle, Gelman, & Gill, 2016). Leading tech-companies have praised its potential and invested heavily in its development (Die Welt, 2016; The Independent, 2017) and major media houses have started experimenting with its storytelling possibilities. Now, journalism allows you to experience solitary confinement, see the war in Iraq firsthand, look at a crater on Mars, watch a military parade in North Korea from the first row or run with the bulls in Pamplona. The current productions have been given the umbrella term ’immersive journalism’, and some researchers predicts that it has the potential to the future of journalism (Doyle et al., 2016; Mufson, 2014; Aronson-Rath, Milward, Owen, & Pitt, 2015).

However, despite the vibrant discourse around the potential of immersive journalism, the academic groundwork in the field is still scarce, and many questions and issues about its production and utility remain unaddressed. Existing studies and business reports on

immersive journalism have notably omitted systematic research into the audience’s

perspective on immersive journalism to understand how audiences perceive its potential, uses, benefits and pitfalls (Watson, 2017).

Throughout media history, new technologies have not always been met with optimism, but rather with fear and skepticism from users and producers of how and what this will

change journalism (Newman, Fletcher, Levy, & Nielsen, 2016). The internet and social media exemplifies technologies with great possibilities for journalism, that challenges traditional media because users have easier access to information without these (Anderson, Bell, & Shirky, 2014). But even though technology enables change, the changes are driven by the media users who embraces the new technology (Nielsen, Cornia, & Kalogeropoulos, 2016) and journalism of course depends on having an audience.

Therefore, the objective of this study, is to take the first step and discover what media users think of immersive journalism as a means of news consumption in the future, by answering the following research question (RQ): How do media users experience and perceive immersive journalism’s potential? To answer this question, the research uses the focus group method to explore the ways in which people construct meaning and

understanding of immersive journalism, and the results have implications for media and researchers who wants to get a better understanding of how audiences see VR in journalism.

Literature Review: Journalism in Transition

From the printing press to television to cable to the internet, journalism has always been evolving and technology is always disrupting it. News in the digital age has changed

dramatically from its roots. Traditional print and broadcast media used to be the exclusive source of journalistic information, whereas today, they are confronted with greater

competition than ever before because of changes driven by new technology and changes in society (Chadwick, 2013). The changed context in which news is consumed is described as a

hybrid media system, (Chadwick, 2013) where the traditional actors are still relevant, but they

are accompanied by new actors whose influences challenges traditional the power structures. The news industry has seen an explosion of new tools and techniques, whose implementation has changed and challenged journalism (Anderson et al., 2014). Social media and the internet have provided individuals with more freedom to communicate and attain information outside of traditional media broadcasters and publishing models (Anderson et al., 2014). Media users today chooses from a range of information sources, many which are free. Online and

smartphone news is favored by many over print soruces (Haak, Parks, & Castells, 2012), and social media is now a main source of news (Newman et al, 2016). Mobile devices enable a news consumption where news is “tagged, curated, aggregated and easily re-distributed”

(Sheller, 2014, p. 13), and professional and citizen journalists both have a say on online platforms such as Twitter, Youtube and Facebook.

This has led to legacy media becoming relatively less important as distributors of news, though they remain important producers of it (Nielsen et al., 2016). Faced with the

consequences of a digital media environment, media companies must adapt to survive and develop new digital strategies (Sheller, 2014), and think in new ways to remain profitable; some are failing because they have not done so (Mersey, 2010). Recent years for the

newspaper sector may have been the worst since the recession (Pew Research Center, 2016), but when talking about a “crisis” in journalism, it appears to be mainly one for traditional print and broadcast media (Grueskin, Seave, & Graves, 2011; Meyer, 2006). These legacy news businesses have suffered a steady decline in subscriptions and advertising revenue and are expected to continue to do so (Anderson et al., 2014). The digitalization of journalism has proved to be strong for transmitting more news faster than ever, but weak for media

companies to maintain and increase profits (Grueskin, Seave, & Graves, 2011).

To complicate the challenges linked to the transformation of the news media, trust in the news is low: An average of 43 % in the EU trusts the news and it is lower in the United States with 33 % (Newman et al., 2016). Furthermore, young audiences today prefer to click their way to news through social media, apps and websites rather than using newspapers and TV (Kasem, Waes, & Wannet, 2015) and despite wanting to be informed, they find

journalism insignificant for their daily life (Cauwenberge, d’Haenens, & Beentjes, 2013; Marchi, 2012). Also, ‘objectivity’ in news is increasingly perceived as naïve; now audiences demand greater transparency (Kasem et al., 2015), seeking to navigate an ocean of

information where intentional misinformation, the so-called “fake news”, challenges what we think is the truth, (Marchi, 2012). Finally, there is a serious reluctance towards paying for

online journalism (Newman et al., 2016) so in sum, the challenges of journalism are accompanied by a troubled water in which media must navigate.

Anderson et al. argues “the only way to get the journalism we need in the current environment is to take advantage of new possibilities” (2014, p. 42). Today, we have a significant growth in using online video for news (Newman et al., 2016), more

technologically capable smartphones becoming the number one platform for news (Newman et al., 2016; Westlund, 2015), and much stronger internet accessibility (Kasem et al., 2015). Combined with the increasing availability of information on distance places (Hepp, 2005), this has paved the way for virtual reality to become a hot topic for journalism, as a wide range of media outlets started has experimenting with it (Doyle et al., 2016). In 2015, The New York

Times sent out more than a million Google Cardboard’s - a foldable and low-cost virtual

reality viewer that mounts onto a smartphone for viewing VR content - to their subscribers for the launch of a new VR initiative (NiemanLab, 2015). Others have also experimented by launching VR apps (CNN, 2017) and a long list of journalistic productions using VR has been developing since late 2015 (Knight Foundation, 2016) which includes pieces on topics as different as the aftermath of an earthquake in Nepal (RYOT, 2015), a visit to North Korea (ABC News, 2015) and the discovery of Mars’ Gale Crater (LA Times, 2015).

Virtual Reality and Immersive Journalism

However, what is virtual reality (VR), and how should it be understood in the context of journalism? The examples named above and plenty of productions since, all attempts to create a notion in audience’s minds of being present in the journalistic story, but despite being labelled as such, calling these productions VR is an exaggeration (Smith, 2015). Most news in VR still consists of videos filmed using a 360-degree camera and is likely to be viewed on a smartphone screen; this does not give audiences a full VR experience (Watson, 2017). The

technology and idea behind these productions are based on the knowledge from over 40 years of using VR in research labs, the gaming industry and science fiction. But at a technical level, experiencing true VR has four key elements (Sherman & Craig, 2003): 1) a virtual world, 2) immersion, 3) sensory feedback/responds to user input), and 4) interactivity. While a virtual

world is the place where content is conveyed and interactivity is the ability to respond to

users’ actions, immersion is understood as the individual’s sense of presence, and it is divided into two categories: mental and physical immersion (Sherman & Craig, 2003). While mental immersion describes the individual’s feeling of being mentally present in a virtual world, which can occur through any kind of (non-) fictional media consumption such as literature, music, TV or journalistic pieces, physical immersion describes the feeling of being physically present in a virtually created world.

The aforementioned examples have sensory feedback (the user chooses what to look at in the production) and immersion is present and key in the production (de la Peña, et al., 2010) - even when not being experienced to the fullest with low-cost hardware (Watson, 2017). But they all lack ‘interactivity’ and do therefore not include all four of these elements for being VR. The same goes for all other 360-degree videos labelled as VR who currently makes up the majority of a growing number of productions (Cornia, Sehl, & Nielsen, 2016) used in journalism.

We do see a small but growing number of productions that also uses

computer-generated virtual worlds designed to represent reality (de la Peña, 2010; The Guardian, 2016), and this enables some levels of interaction where the audience impacts the events unfolding. However, these are currently either generally inaccessible or limited to eye control - not a general control - of movement. Notable examples of the latter are the Guardian’s ‘6x9: A virtual experience of solitary confinement, which puts the user into a virtual prison cell where eye movement determines what narrative voices are heard (2016), and ‘Hunger in Los

Angeles” by VR storyteller Nonny de la Peña, where users witness the collapse of a person waiting in line at a food bank (2013). She was the first to explore and introduce the term “immersive journalism” (2010) and described how it would allow audiences to enter stories and explore sights and sound, and maybe even feelings and emotions accompanying the news.

Given these technical definitions, this paper adopts the term immersive journalism (IJ) to embrace all VR-labelled content without creating misunderstandings of what VR is and is not. It is the most comprehensive way of describing the production of news where people gain first-person experiences of events or situations described in news stories designed for

watching with a headset, even though other literature have used VR journalism instead (Doyle et al., 2016; Watson, 2017). Still, virtual reality (VR) will be used to describe the technology.

Research on Immersive Journalism so far

The existing body of literature on IJ is limited and so far, it is primarily produced by those active in the practical field. Therefore, these can be argued to have a considerable interest in its further development. This is not meant to undermine important findings, but it should be kept in mind when reflecting on the insights brought forward.

Following up on de la Pena et al.’s early explorations of IJ technology and its effect (2010), namely 3 projects on VR for news has captured early experiments and discussed its possibilities (Aronson-Rath et al., 2015; Doyle et al., 2016; Watson, 2017). Those have all described the technological developments such as the launch of high-end consumer headsets and examined the finest examples of current IJ. Furthermore, they focus on and where journalists and media should focus their resources of they want to shape VR as a technology for news. Finally, they emphasize that IJ has the potential to be IJ the “future of news” and note that VR can produce greater empathy among audiences, but also poses greater risks because of the immediacy of the content.

However, the opinions and experiences of consumers only plays a very small role in this research. De la Peña et al. (2010) includes a small-scale experiment with descriptive, inductive findings, but these serve to demonstrate possible reactions to the technology and promote its potential rather than scientifically assess audience’s perspectives. Right now, little is known about the potential consumers of VR content (Nielsen's Media Lab, 2016). The lack of audience research on the field of IJ is noted by Watson, who writes: “Despite the

importance of audiences to the entire industry, there has been very little systematic audience research to date” (2017, p. 40) and by Doyle et al., who called the questions of whether people will actually use VR for daily news consumption, “perhaps the biggest question facing the nascent industry” (2016, p. 6).

Right now, the public is confused about VR (Watson, 2017), and this paper responds to these calls by focusing on the audience perception of it, through a specific examination of the narrower, currently relevant examples of IJ.

Studying Audiences

Understanding media audiences is considered key to explain media effects (Rubin, 2009) and these are normally studied from a Uses and Gratifications theory (U&G)

perspective. U&G originated from studying how media and its content satisfies the social and psychological needs of audiences (Cantril, 1942), and gained popularity with a change of research perspective from ‘what do media do to people?’ to ‘what do people do with media?’ (Katz, 1959). Even though gratifications sought from media use differs from the gratifications

obtained from this use, ‘uses’ and ‘gratifications’ are strongly correlated, and a regular use of

media over time is seen to imply that the gratifications sought are gratifications obtained (Levy & Windahl, 1984; Palmgreen, Wenner, & Rayburn, 1980). Therefore, this paper refers to these simply as gratifications.

The cornerstone of U&G theory in relation to mass communication was laid in the 1970’s (Ruggiero, 2000) with the understanding of audiences as selective and motivated by rational self-awareness of their own needs, and the expectation that those needs would be satisfied by particular types of media and content (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitzt, 1974;

Palmgreen, 1984). McQuail, Blumler, and Brown identified four broad gratifications for using traditional media: diversion (distraction and passing time), personal relationships

(“ammunition” for social conversations), personal identity (self-understanding and

exploration of reality), and surveillance (seeking information to understand and control the environment) (1972). Of these, only surveillance has remained constant across gratification studies; the original outline of U&G, however, still dominates research on media

gratifications to this day, where the concept and notion of an active audience rather than a

passive one has reached new heights with the internet and moved from an assumption to a

reality (Sundar & Limperos, 2013).

It has, however, also been recognized that U&G has its flaws. Among those, it has been criticized for lacking comprehensive theoretical grounding to be a theory, for lacking clarity on central concepts such as motives and behavior, and for being too narrow in its audience focus thus not acknowledging how technology itself can impact the selection of media for obtaining gratifications (Ruggiero, 2000). This led to scholarly calls and attempts to bring U&G into the 21st century (Rubin, 2009; Ruggiero, 2000; Sundar & Limperos, 2013), in which it has been argued that modern gratification research must be more open for nuances in the gratifications, and acknowledge that new media gives rise to new gratifications.

Still, U&G seems to be considered a highly effective approach to the study of uses and effects of newer electronic media at the beginning of the 21st century (Basilisco & Cha, 2015; LaRose, 2004; Rubin, 2009), including U&G research on mobile phone usage (Leung & Wei, 2000) and why we use (Basilisco & Cha, 2015) and share content on social media (Quinn,

2016). However, no studies have focused on gratifications associated with IJ or VR.

Gratifications identified from traditional media may not be applicable, since the activities are fundamentally different, so instead the theory is used here as a very first step in understanding what key reasons audiences identify for using IJ, and what gratifications they obtain from it.

With all of this in mind, I pose four audience-centered sub-research questions to structure the data collection and analysis:

Sub-RQ A: Which gratifications do users obtain from immersive journalism? Sub-RQ B: How do media users see immersive journalism as different to and

complementary of traditional journalism?

Sub-RQ C: What, according to media users, characterizes content and topics well

suited for immersive journalism?

Sub-RQ D: To what extent do audiences see virtual reality technology as a potential

medium for regular news consumption?

Methods

Because this research aims to shed a light on the uncovered ground of how users perceive IJ, the method must acknowledge to be starting from “scratch”. Therefore, an inductive, bottom-up approach using qualitative research is the most favorable contribution (Boeije, 2010), because it enables novel findings based on studying things in their natural setting with an attempt to make sense of, or interpret, new phenomena in terms of the meaning people bring to them (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994).

This approach means that the research will not contain generalizations nor statistics, which is a common critique of the qualitative research since other researchers cannot apply the findings directly in their own work (Bryman, 2012). But research with an explorative

nature will benefit more from qualitative data, especially when the starting point is taking first steps towards an understanding of a new area of research (David & Sutton, 2011).

Focus Groups

To understand how users perceive IJ, this study used the focus group method. In this, the tone can be kept rather informal, and “everyday talk” is useful to gather everyday knowledge, because jokes, anecdotes etc. are useful in the process of producing and

reproducing meaning in daily life (Kitzinger, 1994; Lunt & Livingstone, 1996). Focus groups are a place where equal minded participants can be each other’s audience in constructing meaning and understanding to a specific issue (Lunt & Livingstone, 1996) – in this case immersive journalism. Furthermore, the researcher controls the research environment and draws conclusions from a well-established point of view, and focus groups are also good to obtain detailed information about personal and group feelings, perceptions and opinions that provides a broader range of information (David & Sutton, 2011).

Clearly, the selection of focus group participants impacts the data, but this is not an issue since the intention is to explore new ground – not to generalize. For focus groups, as for qualitative methods in general, the data needs to be interpreted through the identification and coding of themes and categories leading to findings that can contribute to theoretical

knowledge and practical use (Boeije, 2010).

Some consider focus groups to have less value than individual interview data, because the member contributions are limited to what they are willing to share in a group, so another mix of group members are not likely to give the same information (Carey, 1995), but this is exactly why focus groups are organized – to simulate how a group processes when brought together and to make ideas emerge (Boeije, 2010).

Simply put, for this study, the quality and depth of information provided by this method would not be possible from quantitative data collection.

Recruitment for Focus Groups

Aiming to recruit participants for two focus groups, recruitment was made using a strict version of convenience sampling, which is the most common method for selecting

participants in focus groups, as it saves time and money but still considers the characteristics of the participants for in relation to the research (Stewart & Shemdasani, 2015). First, a webpage and a flyer with relevant information about the focus group were created, and this information plus an online form for signing up was shared through the researcher’s network via social media, word-of-mouth and messaging apps for a week. It was stressed that anyone with a personal knowledge of the author could not participate, that participants were expected to bring a smartphone and headphones, and that the discussion would be in English. The latter was to make sure participants were fluent enough to have a high speed interactive discussion. It was also advertised that potential participants would receive a pair of Google Cardboard VR-viewers for participating. These were kindly donated by Google Newslab, who supported this research by providing a total number of 14 Cardboards for the focus groups.

A total of 22 people showed interest in participating, and each was told to fill out a short questionnaire with basic information about themselves (age, gender, occupation, nationality, contact information). Based on the answers, participants were divided into homogenous two groups: one for communication-related occupations (students or practitioners of journalism, communication or marketing) and one for non-communication related occupations (students or practitioners of anything else). This led to 13 confirmed participants (n=13) of which 8 were males. 6 joined the communication (com) group and 7 joined a group of

students (9 of 13), they had 9 different nationalities (five of them were Dutch) and they were between 22 and 60 years of age (though the oldest was 60 and the second oldest was 32).

The two focus groups were conducted on the 18th and 19th of April of 2017 at the University of Amsterdam campus. Participants were welcomed by the researcher, who also moderated the discussions and everything was recorded on video for analysis purposes. A fellow master student of the researcher provided technical assistance with recording devices, provided participants with snacks and beverages, and assisted in answering questions.

Conducting the Focus Groups

After everyone had signed an informed consent form, the moderator introduced the focus group and ensured everyone was connected to the internet and could find the

journalistic examples for the focus group; everyone was also given a Google Cardboard and instructed in its use. Participants were then asked to introduce themselves and their favorite movie, an opening question to break the ice, and then the discussion started out with simple questions about why and how they used journalism.

Then, VR was brought into the conversation, using association cards, where participants wrote down what came to mind when thinking about ‘VR’, which led to a short discussion. This was followed by two rounds of structured discussion about two examples of IJ: first, a 360-degree video production by the New York Times about the war in Iraq called ‘Fight for Falluja’ (The New York Times, 2016), and second, a IJ smartphone application by the

Guardian about solitary confinement in the US called ‘6x9’ (The Guardian, 2016). After each

example, participants shared their reactions, and the discussion was gently structured around the four sub-RQ’s. For sub-RQ B, participants were shown a clip from at TV-documentary on solitary confinement in the US by Frontline (2014) based on the same research as the

After this, a final discussion challenged participants to all answer if they thought they would be using IJ in the future. Then, a closing statement summarizing the discussion was made, participants gave their final comments, and they were thanked for their participation and told they could keep the Cardboards. Both sessions lasted for 1,5 hours, and a full text of the focus group interview guide can be found as appendix 1.

Analyzing the Data

A thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Thematic analysis is a method for finding themes that emerge as being important to the description of the phenomenon (Daly, Kellehear, & Gliksman, 1997), through “careful reading and re-reading of the data” (Rice & Ezzy, 1999, p. 258). The analysis is data-driven and the coding is a recursive process – not a linear one (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

The “scissor-and-sort” technique (Stewart & Shemdasani, 2015) was used for the thematic analysis: an inexpensive and efficient technique that includes two steps: 1) A transcription of the data followed by a classification of major topics and issues and finding material in the transcript related to those, and 2) Digitally cutting apart the transcribed version of the focus groups and grouping them after topic which provides the material for

understanding each topic or issue (Stewart & Shemdasani, 2015). For this, NVivo - a qualitative textual analysis software - was used.

After a familiarization process by the researcher through transcribing, reading, re-reading, and writing down initial ideas, a code list of major topics related to the RQ and sub-RQ’s was generated. Then, data relevant to each code was collected while the coding set was inductively expanded through coding and recoding of data. When an existing code wasn’t enough, a new one was added. When all data had been coded and the major topics presented properly refined, the final list consisted of 24 relevant codes (See appendix 2) of which four

were only present in one of the two groups: The code for ‘expressing a feeling of being immersed or engaged’ was only represented in the com group, whereas the codes for ‘moral issues’, ‘VR as a hyped gimmick’ and ‘frequency of potential use’ were only represented in the non-com group.

The continued analysis was structured around the sub-RQ topics: a) Gratifications from immersive journalism, b) Immersive journalism vs traditional journalism, c) Characteristics of well suited content and topics, and d) VR as a medium for regular news consumption. Each of the 24 code labels was categorized into these topics as shown in appendix 3.

Results

In the following, the data for each sub-RQ is presented using examples, descriptions and quotes from focus groups. Participants are referred to by a letter (A for members of the ‘non-com group’, B for the ‘com group’) and a number to differentiate participants from each other. This is to protect the privacy of the participants who were promised anonymity.

A. Gratifications from Immersive Journalism

Participants were asked to discuss why and how they would potentially use IJ to satisfy specific needs (sub-RQ A). Their identified gratifications are grouped into six broad categories (see table 1) of gratifications, some of which speak to traditional U&G research, others of which fit better with research on immersive media, as described below. These six gratifications can be clustered into three pairs of respectively two gratifications of experience,

Table 1 – Obtained gratifications identified

Experience Emotions Agency

Immersion Transportation Emotion Empathy Information Control

The feeling of leaving one’s physical world and entering another reality or point of view The ability to go anywhere and be anyone (else) immediately Positive or negative emotions triggered by the content A better or deeper understanding of others The process of gathering information Being able to control the experience of a journalistic production.

Immersion and transportation. The first gratification is immersion, the experience of

leaving one’s physical world and instead entering another reality or point of view. This was a dominant gratification identified by the com group. Many expressing feeling highly immersed in the IJ examples saying: “when I was in the cell” (B2) or “I really immersed myself into the things” (B1).

The non-com group expressed less immersion - the term was not even used - but some did feel the impact of a change in point of view: “I have never seen prison as a threat to me, but suddenly it became one” (A3). Overall, they distanced themselves more than the com group from immersiveness: “In the end, we are sort of comfortably still here in Amsterdam and we’re having chocolate” (A1).

The feeling of being there (or not) is closely related to immersion, but separated by giving users a notion of being taken to another place - perhaps one they cannot physically experience. This gratification of transportation is the second gratification identified. While members of the non-com group called it “an extension of perception” (A4), this was again mostly addressed by the com group who pondered seeing a war battlefield, watching a surgery, or witnessing breaking news stories somewhere as they unfold and “instead of going to Twitter, I would go ‘there’ instead to check it out” (B6).

Research on IJ has found these two VR concepts to be of particular relevance for

journalism (Aronson-Rath et al., 2015), and a correlation between feeling more immersed and a greater potential for feeling transported has been argued (Witmer & Singer, 1998).

Contributing to this, De la Peña et al., found users responding to media experiences as if they were real despite knowing they were not, calling it Response As if Real (RAIR) (2010).

Immersion and transportation were thus confirmed in these focus groups as key

gratifications posed by VR technology in journalism, and it also contributes to important findings of U&G research: Key reasons for using media information-gathering on conditions in the society and the world, and gain insights into the circumstances of others (McQuail, 1983). This can be related to the increasing availability today of information about distant places (Hepp, 2005) and concurrent concerns of Western audiences not caring enough of distant suffering, called “compassion fatigue” (Moeller, 1999). For IJ, the connection of transportation and immersion becomes even more powerful for journalism, because of the ability to not only go to distant places but also feeling present there. This may give audiences a greater understanding of stories when location or physical aspects are key to the events. However, the group division revealed interesting differences between the participants. Most noteworthy, many from the non-com group distanced themselves from what was and was not real and by discussing bias and fear of manipulation, whereas almost the entire com group got highly immersed both verbally and physically. This could indicate that an initial higher interest or knowledge about journalism has a significant impact on how IJ is experienced.

Emotion and empathy. These refer to the participant’s identification of internal and

external emotions that emerge from the use of IJ. These included both positive and negative emotional reactions; gratifications do not have to be experienced as positive. For example, catharsis/tension release are argued to be a consumer gratification from media in the digital age (Orlik, 2015), in the sense that it can be beneficial to experience media violence because

it releases tension that otherwise might have resulted in real-life aggressions. In this current case, negative emotions experienced (such as feeling claustrophobic) are here regarded as a gratification because they contribute to the understanding of the story.

The com group expressed how they “got pretty scared sometimes, so I really needed to take a look to see if I was still here” (B6), how it was “extremely uncomfortable” (B5) and that it was “disorientating” (B3), but also how emotions enriched the experience despite the unpleasantness. B2 and B5 both suggested that “If you want an emotional response from the viewer, then VR is the way to go” (B2).

The non-com group found it “really cool, but also a little bit stressful” (A1), to be a “very active way of consuming” (A2), and A3 found it “exciting” and “tense” even though she at first found it very uncomfortable due to her claustrophobia. Almost all participants expressed an internal emotional process as a gratification from their experiences with IJ, and argued that “is a very good way to trigger certain emotions” (A5).

When the participants described emotions, they often linked their own experience to the notion of empathy for others: “When you can really get the feeling of how it is to be there [in solitary confinement], you kind of understand why they get crazy. It’s very shocking” (B1).

Empathy is therefore the fourth gratification identified. Both groups touched upon the

opportunity IJ presents to put people in others’ shoes, which B4 called “unique” because not enough people “look outside their own life and their own privilege of whatever they have”. However, it was especially the non-com group that focused a lot on empathy and the “emotional investment” (A1) in the ‘characters’ in the stories as an important gratification, one that could lead users to care about topics or stories they may otherwise have gotten desensitized to. “Every time there is a war, some people are saying ‘this can never happen again’ and it always happens again” and “maybe they really need to realize what is going on and VR could contribute to that” (A5).

This resonates with de la Peña et al. (2010), who found that IJ leads to emotions accompanying news and to greater audience involvement with the stories, which can create empathy. VR storyteller and content creator Chris Milk has likewise described VR as “the ultimate empathy machine” in a Ted Talk (Milk, 2015), and empathy is also explored by the Tow Report Virtual Reality Journalism (Aronson-Rath et al., 2015). Emotion and emotional release are key elements in literature on U&G, considered to belong within ‘diversion’ as one of the four broad motives for using media (McQuail et al., 1972) and while it has also been more specifically linked to entertainment as a reason for media use, empathy has been linked to integration and social interaction (McQuail, 1983) as gratifications, as well.

In this case, while emotion and empathy are not new media gratifications, the immediacy and intensity with which IJ elicits them might make these particularly relevant gratifications for this sort of journalism. Such gratifications can give audiences a deeper and richer understanding of stories by appealing to their personal feelings in ways that contribute to a strong understanding of others. For journalists, this is potentially appealing as part of their role conception may be as mobilizers to take action on pressing issues (Beam, Weaver, & Brownlee, 2009) As such, we see a potential in VR for journalists to achieve that goal.

Information and control. Both groups said IJ would be useful to add value to areas of

personal interest and help reduce the complexity of information on complex matters: “I thought about history education (…) from the 16th century, which I think would help

especially young people from the age 8-18 to sort of understand better how things were” (A7). A4 noted that it would be great for occasionally experiencing a “special piece” on something one already had an interest in and wanted to know more about (see more under

characteristics). Most participants considered it useful for getting a new perspective on

well-known topics. Notably, however, consensus emerged in the non-com group that IJ was too intense to use for every day information gathering, which will be revisited in section d).

Both groups highlighted how they could control the experience and therefore also the information they were interested in when using IJ: “I wanted to actually listen to the whole thing [about letters on the bed in the prison cell], so I stayed there and kept looking” (B4). This leads and connects to the sixth gratification, control. Users can explore and find their own answers to questions, but also choose to stay in the story for a long time and to purposely get lost while exploring, as several said they did: “I forgot [about time] and got lost in there, and I was just exploring the space to see what was to my right and to my left” (B2). The ability to look around was found by the com group to create a very personal experience because “everyone can have their own experience with it” (B4).

This idea of control was particularly relevant to the IJ app experience, however.

Participants - especially in the non-com group - distinguished between the app experience and the 360-degree video by describing the latter as a more limiting experience, which A4 called “like you are a GoPro [camera] being carried around”. Also, the body language of the

participants in the com group varied while trying out the two examples: during the 360-degree video, B6 stood up while the rest remained seated, but for the IJ app, three stood up and even started walked around the room. During the five minutes, B6 stumbled over an item shown in the video and almost walked into the camera recorder, B1 moved her hand to reach out for a virtual item and B2 walked so far away from the table that he almost hit a wall on the opposite of the 85 m2 big room. This, of course, not only exemplifies the immersion mentioned previously, but also illustrates the level of agency related to control and information in the experience.

Information-seeking has, as noted, been a constant across most U&G studies (Sundar & Limperos, 2013), and for in media studies in general. In the age of information, media users will seek information (Ruggiero, 2000). IJ presents a new way of getting information, however, that gives more agency and control to the user/audience. Thus, information and

control are important gratifications of agency adding value to traditional news stories –

especially for complex topics, where the immediacy and control of the experience can simplify the content and provide a more personal information experience.

B. Immersive Journalism vs Traditional Journalism

The discussion of how IJ differs from and complements more traditional journalism (sub-RQ B) was prompted by participants trying out the IJ app on solitary confinement after having watched a clip from a TV documentary on the same topic and based on the same journalistic research (Frontline, 2014). Participants in both groups agreed that the two formats had different qualities, and it made little sense to choose a favorite: Instead, IJ adds value to traditional journalism. They emphasized how the TV piece was more pleasant for being introduced to facts while the IJ app, despite being active and stressful, gave a better and more memorable understanding of the prisoners in solitary confinement: “Watching it on TV communicated to my brain, where the [app] was communicating more to my heart” (B5).

Participants discussed how traditional TV can feel ‘overdramatized’ and here the IJ experience can be ‘more authentic’: “You’re genuinely like this prisoner, you listen to their story and there is no element of over-acting or dramatizing it, it just felt very real” (B2). The notion of empathy was included in the authenticity discussion and linked to the experience with comments such as “[In the documentary] it’s very easy to distance yourself from them [prisoners] and to not really care about their cause, but when you feel like it is you sitting there, you suddenly feel much closer to them” (A1). Thus, authenticity emerged as a way that IJ can differ from traditional journalism.

This perceived authenticity also prompted discussion of potential for manipulation and over-editing in both traditional and immersive journalism, where especially the com group were positive about the prospects of presenting IJ content because the entire scene – not just

one angle of it – is presented first-hand to the audience. The non-com group members were more skeptical and members emphasized how it still is “something the editors did” (A6) and that “[I don’t think] we should discard all of our objection to bias because this is still bias, and you can still make anything biased – even if you are using VR.” A3 and A7 agreed and argued that IJ also has moral issues because it can give news about real people a “video-game feel.” Addressing the best way to make IJ content seem real and not manipulated nor like a video-game, Migielicz and Zacharia (2016) produced a practical guide for VR journalism that touches issues also raised by scholars such as positioning of the journalist or the narrative steering in storytelling. (Aronson-Rath et al., 2015; de la Peña et al., 2010). Scholars have found it problematic, that IJ simply seems so real, as Kool writes: “they are just

representations. In translation, noise by the storyteller’s decisions disrupts the purity of the conveyed reality” (2016, p. 9). Thus, we see that IJ treads a fine line between providing a sense of greater authenticity for some users, whereas others see it as video-game-esque and no less subject to manipulation than traditional news stories.

Both groups highlighted the new and personal perspective as the most important

difference between the two kinds of journalism. IJ allows the user to go closer to the story and experience it personally in a way that makes it easier to relate to the people involved. “You can use your own perspective to decide whether it’s an issue or not”, said B4, as a counterpart to having to take the word of someone else for it. Individuals of both groups (A4 and B5) drew parallels to TV’s impact on the Vietnam War, when the American people got their first real pictures of war; such images are credited with turning public opinion against the war (Mandelbaum, 1982). This led to some specific points of caution in the discussion of IJ’s impact: A3 found it problematic and said “We don’t need more and more technology to enhance our moral judgement (…) I can still say that it’s horrible what happened in Iraq, but I don’t need to experience it to know it”, and B5 encouraged media who want to use IJ to study

its effect carefully before using it over traditional journalism: “This [IJ] can have the same impact [as the Vietnam War had] that people can get so much more engaged then they were before, and you have to know what you are playing with”. Interestingly, scholars have also discussed IJ related to the effect of technology during the Vietnam War. Kool (2016) notes how we should think carefully about how it can “change the transmission, the reception, and the understanding of news around the world” (p. 9).

In sum, when comparing traditional and immersive journalism, the most important aspect is the personal experience and emotional impact of IJ. IJ is not set to replace traditional news according to the users, which is a contrast to the way the internet as a technology is threatening the legacy media (Nielsen, et al., 2016), but instead it provides complementary features, that also raises its own ethical issues.

C. Characteristics of Good Content and Topics

Both groups had a rich variety of ideas for content and topics. As noted, participants agreed that IJ would never be the only way of consuming news, but that it would and should supplement other productions. This fits with many current productions of IJ, including the 360-degree example used in this study: Fight for Fallujah, which was released alongside thematic stories by The New York Times (2016). Therefore, participants all believed that specific characteristics of the content would have to be present for them to be interested as media consumers, but the two groups differed a bit on their approach to these characteristics.

The non-com group focused on convenience in terms of processing the content and in determining what needed their attention. All content should be worth exploring, but

experiencing IJ demands full attention and the user is likely to become tired. Not only is it easy to get distracted but the user will also be faced with a constant fear of missing out on what is happening out of eye-sight. Therefore, they only assumed they would use it for special

times when something is worth the extra attention and effort: If the content can give an inside perspective, make them understand other groups of society, access the otherwise inaccessible or take them to special events. For topics, the group discussed mostly hard news topics such as homosexuality in Russia and general reporting on social issues and climate changes. War coverage was “popular” among some, but others feared it would be too exciting and game-esque – the latter was discussed in the previous section. The common denominator for good VR content was “what can make you care”, following the argument that over-exposure in regular news has caused some topics to lose importance: “It’s good to show war, because people get desensitized and numb – they stop caring because it’s all around us constantly in the news (…) but it should affect people” (A1). Watson (2017) advises news organizations who want to attract audiences to combine hard news with more positive content, and some participants did also advocate for VR pieces on art, city history and travel destinations, although it was unclear whether they were looking for journalism or simply information.

The com group also saw emotional impact as an important characteristic for relevant IJ, but focused more on the ability go anywhere and see exclusive places as described in the gratifications section. It was argued that it would be especially useful for events happening where simply “being there” would add to the understanding: “It would just be ‘this is what’s going on’ (…) and you could still have a reporter reporting and you can listen and still look around” (B4). Several mentioned protest coverage as good use: “You could see someone on a stage and experience their speech, not from a TV news package, but you would get the whole thing and the full impact” (B2). Thus, the com group focused more on transportation whereas the non-com group emphasized empathy. Some respondents even denied the focus on specific topics, though, and simply emphasized the story-telling qualities of the production: “If

and “if you do it correctly, every topic could be benefit from VR” (A4). Research also finds narrative storytelling techniques will remain powerful in IJ (Aronson-Rath et al., 2015).

In sum, good IJ content adds relevant value to another production. This production should preferable be on a rather serious topic, but it does not necessarily matter if it uses the technology to take the user to otherwise inaccessible places or to tell them a great story.

D. VR as a Medium for Journalism

As an important part of discussing VR as a potential medium for consuming everyday news (sub-RQ D), the participants were all asked to give a ‘before’ and ‘after’ answer using ‘yes’, no’ or ‘maybe’ to if they thought they would be using IJ on a regular basis for their news in the future. There was a clear difference between the two groups. In the com group, 1 out of 6 versus 4 out of 6 answered ‘yes’ before and after they had tried it, with another acknowledging VR’s potential for documentaries but not for regular evening news programs. They all believed IJ had the potential to be the “next big thing” and they wanted and hoped to see a development of more options for the user experience such as selecting and deselecting elements in a story and the ability to turn music or subtitles on and off while watching. Their biggest hesitation was the social constraint of feeling self-conscious and looking silly using VR viewers: “You do feel silly when you move. Like you shouldn’t move, because you are ‘falling for it’” (B3). A similar finding was reported by BBC, whose research on home VR consumption suggested current limitations to the way audiences experience VR ranging from “clunky user experiences of the headsets to confusion around varying user experience” (Watson, 2017, p. 37).

The social constraint was echoed by the non-com group, though they believed it would change along with the development and implementation of the technology in our lives that would make it more convenient to use: “If it’s going to be the future and everyone is walking

around with special glasses that can switch the real world on and off and have different channels, then I would also use it on the streets or in the metro” (A3). For personal news use in the future however, only 2 out of 7 said ‘yes’ while the rest said either ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ both before and after trying it. Only one member changed her mind and went from ‘maybe’ to ‘no’, thus the non-com members were harder to persuade than the com group. A reason for this could be different approaches to the concept of ‘news’ and how to use it. Furthermore, the com group had a much clearer idea of what VR was before the group session started, and given the fact that they had signed up for the focus group and thus expressed an interest on a perhaps more informed basis than the non-com group, this could be an indicator of how a matter of interest in VR and its development impacts the experience positively.

Discussion and Conclusion

Against a backdrop of VR hype among media professionals and researchers (Doyle et al., 2016), this study wanted to take a much needed first step for the understanding of what media users think of immersive journalism as a means of news consumption in the future.

This research has found that even though users have some clear reservations about the technology and insecurities regarding their own consumption of it, media users see great potential in the use of VR for journalism. To them, IJ will never be the only way of

consuming journalism, but if it is done right, it can add great value to almost any journalistic production. Specifically, six strongly interconnected gratifications from using IJ were identified: immersion, transportation, emotion, empathy, information and control. These gratifications are all individually echoed either in research on immersive media (Aronson-Rath et al., 2015; de la Peña et al., 2010) or U&G research on traditional and new media (Katz et al., 1974; Ruggiero, 2000; Sundar & Limperos, 2013) but as a set of gratifications

something that offers “unheard-of-possibilities for journalism” as news becomes “an experience” (Kasem et al., 2015, p. 16).

Users believed IJ to encompass elements hard to mirror in traditional journalism such as triggering of real emotions, creating a more personal and individual news experience and seeing stories from a usually inaccessible perspective. However, IJ was considered less suitable for presenting facts and statistics, to be too stressful and attention demanding, possibly morally challenging and relatively inconvenient to use in its current form.

While other researchers have touched very little upon the audience perception of IJ, these results links to their main findings, and especially to the importance of empathy, the notion of “being there” at exclusive places and the ability to immerse oneself into stories are constants in discussions of what makes IJ so interesting and journalistically relevant

(Aronson-Rath et al., 2015; de la Peña et al., 2010, Doyle et al., 2016; Watson, 2017). Even though the study finds plenty of reasons for gaining a better understanding of the audience perception of IJ, it finds no good reason for media to fear or not at all take advantage of the technological possibilities that VR provides to the journalistic experience. VR can give audiences a deeper and richer understanding of stories that appeals to emotions and empathy while creating a strong notion of being present elsewhere. New media and new technology come with new gratifications for its users (Ruggiero, 2000; Sundar & Limperos, 2013) and by connecting transportation and immersion and adding emotions and agency, IJ is a powerful tool to cover and understand otherwise inaccessible places when used right. This is especially appealing to journalists, whose role conception may be as mobilizers for taking action on pressing issues (Beam et al., 2009). It can provide a personal experience of journalism not matched by channels of news, and this will only be stronger once the productions become fully immersive, response and thus: a full VR experience.

This study has notable limitations, most of which are linked to the focus group method. Despite an ambition of recruiting a diverse set of focus group participants, the requirements of being fluent in English, having a smartphone and being in Amsterdam for the group naturally reduced the pool of participants, and the groups had a majority being students in their 20’s based in Amsterdam. This sample of higher-educated university students is not representative of other demographic segments (the generation of their parents or the less educated) and it is plausible to assume that users less familiar with smartphones, social media and new

technologies will also a different attitude to IJ. However, younger audiences are considered particularly interesting because they still are in a process of shaping their news habits (Marchi, 2012) and “digital natives” with a higher expectancy in accepting new technology (Kasem et al., 2015)

Another limitation was the use of Google Cardboards for experiencing IJ instead of more expensive and better equipment such as Oculus Rift or Google Daydream, which clearly would have improved the technical part of the experience and possibly contributed further to the notions of immersiveness expressed by the group; it would have been too expensive to acquire. However, Google Cardboard is the VR-viewer that big media outlets have sent out to their subscribers, and it is currently considered the best cheap way to familiarize with VR which goes well with the ambition of this research.

Despite these limitations, this study addresses the lack of research on IJ’s potential audiences and contributes with findings that facilitates a platform for others to now take the next steps. There is still a lot to be learned about providing users with IJ experiences they find relevant, and perhaps more importantly to understand the emotional impact of using VR in journalism: both focus groups ended on a note of ‘we should be careful with how we use it’.

Future studies should build upon these initial findings by applying a quantitative and more generalizable approach to complement these findings. How is the information present in

IJ versus traditional journalism absorbed by audiences? Which leads to greater learning, greater attitude change, greater empathy, and greater recall? Can these technologies be used to engage audiences that are otherwise backing away from journalism? This study urges

researchers and media to continue approaching VR in journalism as a subject of research and particularly to continue to explore users’ perceptions of IJ. Only then can we better assess where the hype ends and reality begins.

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Appendix 1: Interview guide for focus groups Before the focus group

- 2 focus groups divided in homogenous groups (based on age/student’s vs non-students which has been assessed in preliminary screening questions for those who showed interest in participating in the focus groups)

- The overall topic is made clear to participants

- All participants are asked to sign an informed consent stating their awareness of being exposed to potentially troubling material that may provoke an emotional reaction and that they at any time may take off the goggles to pause or stop watching.

Part 1: WELCOME (10 minutes)

Purpose: To create a nice atmosphere with relaxed participants

- Welcome

- Explanation of research and focus group - Introduction of myself

- Description of focus group “rules” (no wrong answers, interested in personal opinions, I am in charge but intend to provide structure rather than fully moderate it so the

participants talk to each other rather than to me (stress this), interested in what you want to say rather than what you think I want to hear, distinguish between own

opinion and what is believed to represent peers)

- Practicalities of focus group: Nameplates, duration of focus group, everything is

recorded, anonymity guaranteed, there are cookies and drinks, VR glasses handed out, participants are asked to download the app 6x9 to their phone (free) and to find Fight for Falluja on Youtube

o If anyone cannot make it work, I write down the names and makes sure we can share mine and Anja’s equipment.

- Any questions?

- Participants asked to introduce themselves and to tell the group what their favorite film is – or which one they say latest (to encourage people to talk)