VR Storytelling Research Articles

An examination of immersive journalism by bibliometric analysis from 1999 to 2023

Immersive journalism is an innovative storytelling approach that aims to enable the audience to experience the event or situation in the news using virtual reality, unlike traditional news narration. In this study, the literature related to the subject was searched using the keywords Immersive Journalism, 360-Degree Video, Narrative journalism, Newsgame, VR Storytelling through the Web of Science database and a data set was created from 955 publications between 1999 and 2023. No filter was applied to the studies in the data set of the study and articles, books, and early access publications as well as book chapters, editorial materials or conference proceedings in the Web of Science database were included in the study. Bibliometric analysis techniques were applied to the obtained data set and the collaboration status and citation maps of authors and institutions were revealed together with various parameters including authors, institutions, keywords used, number of citations and distribution of publications according to countries.As a result of the analyses, while the number of studies related to the subject has increased since 2017, the highest number of studies was conducted in 2021. The most articles on the subject of the study are in the “Communication” category. While the majority of academic studies on the subject were carried out in the United States, studies originating from this country were cited the most. While “Virtual Reality” is the most commonly used word in the studies on the subject, “IEEE Access” stands out as the journal with the most publications on the subject. On the other hand, the study revealed important authors, studies and themes in the literature on immersive journalism, emphasised the interactions between authors and disciplines, and provided a road map for future research. The study has limitations in terms of the publication languages of some of the studies in the dataset, the time period of the dataset and the singularity of the preferred database.

Virtual Reality and Charitable Giving: The Influence of Space, Presence, and Attention

AbstractVirtual reality (VR) can boost charitable attitudes and behavior. In an experiment with 100 participants viewing the content in VR vs. desktop computer, the VR group exhibited significantly higher levels of spatial presence (MD = 1.24, p < .001), attention allocation (MD = . 58, p < .001), spatial situation model building (MD = .47, p = .01), and empathy (MD = .46, p = .049). Donation behavior did not differ between the two groups (p = .36). Both computer and VR viewers shared similar emotions, but VR users felt greater immersion and emotional intensity, perceiving themselves as active participants, while computer viewers took a more passive role. This study generated insights for nonprofits considering VR in their marketing strategies, shedding light on the potential of VR storytelling and its effects on charitable giving.

Experimenting with non-fiction VR storytelling: micronarrative, abstraction and interactive navigation. The case of In Pieces VR

ABSTRACT This article presents In Pieces VR, a VR-based artwork and experimental documentary on political prison, and discusses its main design challenges, goals, and creative approach. This project aims at creating a documentary and artistic experience that departs from conventional immersive journalism by presenting to its viewers a story made out of very small narrative units, and with subjects presented in the form of virtual sculptures devoid of any specific identity. The idea is that by leaving much of the making sense left open, viewers will have to fill in the gaps. The working hypothesis is that this will help create a different emotional, intellectual and political connection with the piece than that a conventional documentary would achieve, particularly to an audience unfamiliar with, or even politically alien to its specific context. Public exhibition of the work and user evaluation showed that the piece was successful in creating such connections.

Cinema memories in 3D modelling and virtual reality storytelling

This paper focuses on the project VR and AR in the valorisation of cultural and artistic heritage within the New Cinema History framework, aims to combine microhistory related to local cinema theatres and Cinema Heritage, and to investigate the possibilities that digital media – in this case Augmented and Virtual Reality – have in the valorisation and preservation of cultural heritage. The final output of the project is the Virtual Reality reconstruction of the Odeon cinema’s architecture and habits of cinemagoing that, thanks to an immersive experience via the Oculus Rift headset, could evoke and simulate historical spectatorship that dealt both with the moment of watching a movie and its peripheral practice. the development of the project, at least four different perspectives on the Odeon cinema converged to form the basis of the VR reconstruction: the literature on the topic, the consultation of public and private archives, the oral sources, and photographs taken on site. This paper focuses mostly on the documents and sources used in the VR project and it aims to investigate how various and heterogeneous documents can be woven together into a philologically reliable historical reconstruction, and how they can be used in 3D modelling and VR storytelling related to Cinema Heritage.

VR Storytelling: Potentials and Limitations of Virtual Reality Narratives

In this introduction we will aim to outline some of the principal transformations that VR is imparting to audiovisual language and experience, with a particular focus on the impact of these innovations on storytelling. The essays of the section span a variety of theoretical approaches and backgrounds, argumentative styles and case studies (e.g. documentaries, games, art), but all of them share a similar rhetorical attitude: underscoring the potential and novelty of VR but, at the same time, identifying a series of remediations and limitations. In particular, they will show that most of the contemporary discourses on VR need to be reframed critically in order to reflect more objectively on complex notions and dynamics such as screen, interactivity, immersion, presence, embodiment, illusion and empathy.

Stage Magic as a Performative Design Principle for VR Storytelling

This article examines The VOID’s Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire (2017) VR arcade attraction, and analyzes the intermedial magic principles employed by co-founder and magician Curtis Hickman to create the illusion of a fictive world with impossible space and liveness. I argue that The VOID (Vision of Infinite Dimensions) functioned like nineteenth century magic theaters run by Georges Melies and others, by employing magic principles of misdirection that directed player attention towards the aesthetics of an illusion, and away from the mechanics of the effects generating technology. Narrative framing and performative role play transported multiple players into a believable Star Wars immersive experience, creating an aesthetics of the impossible that reflected the goal of many stage magic tricks, and was foundational to trick films in the cinema of attractions of the early twentieth century. Using game studies concepts like Huizinga’s magic circle and theatre arts concepts like Craig’s uber-marionette, this article suggests that The VOID and other stage magic approaches to VR, like Derren Brown’s Ghost Train (2017), are a new medium for participatory theatre that incorporate immersive features from both cinema and games.

VR Stories of Travel and Exile: Forensic Storytelling and the Politics of Dynamic Framing

In this article, I analyse recent VR works that emphasize fictional or documentary stories of travel and exile, and thereby consider an active engagement with the environment crucial to the construction of narratives. In so doing, I re-examine and bring into dialogue three existing strands in film theory from the perspective of VR: an aesthetics of discovery (Andrew, 2007), the idea of liberal and embodied perception (Bazin 1953, Sobchack 2004) and an implied connection between film spectatorship and forensics (Benjamin 1931 & 1939). I then propose forensics as a narrative model for VR storytelling, and thereby emphasize broader epistemological and ideological implications of the discovering spectator. As in forensic research, a VR environment offers the spectator scenes in which each detail is potentially relevant to the story: meaning is then achieved through the discovery of relevant pieces information.

Tracing Embodied Narrative in VR Experiences

In this article, I will consider the specificity of narrative in VR from the perspective of its embodied, spatial, and participatory nature. For this purpose, I will look at storytelling in VR from a neurofilmological perspective that accounts for both the cognitive and phenomenological and conceptualizes the viewer as an organism, applying an integrative view. I will probe several ideas from cognitive sciences and phenomenological cinema and media studies in order to support the above understanding of narrative in VR. I will apply these theories and ideas to specific VR case studies: Book of Distance (Randall Okita, 2019), Heterotopias (Noa Kaplan and Szilvia Ruszev, 2018), and Carne y Arena (Alejandro Inarritu, 2017). Finally, this article will discuss the terms “ambient storytelling” (Stein and Fisher 2013), “somatic montage” (Waite 2016), and “embodied narrative” (a term used in cognitive sciences) and their relevance concerning narrative in VR.

VR 스토리텔링의 비선형적 담화 구성 연구 : 애니메이션 〈펄(Pearl)〉과 〈소파혹성(Planet of the Couches)〉을 중심으로

가상현실로 통칭되는 VR(Virtual Reality)은 이용자가 190도 내외의 제한된 시야각으로 360도 공간을 체험한다는 점에서 스토리텔링의 비선형성(non‐linearity)이 두드러지는 매체이다. 본 연구는 VR 콘텐츠에서 시선의 자유와 상호작용성으로 인해 스토리텔링의 비선형성이 이용자 경험의 차원과 콘텐츠 구성의 차원에서 구현되는 양상을 유형화하고 비선형적 스토리텔링이 구현하는 의미효과를 구체적 사례분석을 통해 규명하기 위한 것이다.BR우선 스토리와 담화의 이중적 시간성을 순서, 지속, 빈도의 차원에서 논의한 주네트(G. Genette)의 이론을 바탕으로 VR 콘텐츠 체험의 비고정성이 이용자 경험의 차원과 콘텐츠 구성의 차원에서 구현되는 방식을 고찰했다. 뒤이어 사전렌더링 방식의 펄(Pearl)과 심슨가족(The Simpsons)의 소파개그 중 실시간렌더링 방식의 VR인 소파혹성(Planet of the Couches)을 통해 비선형적 담화 구성의 유형과 그 의미효과를 분석했다. 사전렌더링 방식으로 제작되는 VR 콘텐츠에서는 시선의 방향, 지속, 이동을 통해 이용자가 고유의 담화를 일회적·개인적·유동적으로 구성하지만 콘텐츠의 구성 자체는 고정된다. 한편, 실시간렌더링 방식으로 제작된 VR 콘텐츠에서는 이용자 경험의 차원뿐 아니라 콘텐츠 구성의 차원에서도 담화의 시간이 일회적·개인적·유동적으로 구성된다. 그 결과, VR 콘텐츠는 이용자에 따라, 그리고 같은 이용자라도 콘텐츠를 체험할 때마다 다른 의미효과를 경험하게 된다. 본 연구는 VR 스토리텔링의 비선형성을 콘텐츠 체험에 대한 수용적 관점으로 접근했다는 점에서 의의를 가지며, VR콘텐츠의 제작, 수용, 비평에서 디딤돌로 기능할 수 있을 것이다.

Storytelling in VR, CAVES and other emerging forms: An interview with Roderick Coover by Katarzyna Boratyn

The following interview with Roderick Coover asks how emerging cinematic technologies transform documentary storytelling. Though his early ethnographic projects, such as Concealed Narratives (1996, filmed and photographed in Ghana) and the Harvest (1999, filmed and photographed in France), he created interactive documentary forms that could bridge modes of expression. The works combine field-notes, editing observations, exposition, travel narratives, encounters and interviews with evocative imagery. In works such as Voyage Into The Unknown (2007), Canyonlands (2009), and Estuary (2013). Coover uses scrolling map environments to offer interactive, cinematic experiences in which users create paths among video clips and data; the works explore spatial knowledge and storytelling, national myth-making and land use. In works such as Something That Happened Only Once (2007) and The Last Volcano (2011), he layers stories on animated panoramic settings to present disturbing disjunctions in the expression of place and memory. His recent collaborative works Three Rails Live (2013) and Toxicity: A Climate Change Narrative (2016) are algorithmic. They use code to combine voices and images from a database in an ever-changing order; the works use storytelling and new technologies to address the questions of climate change and industrial waste. In Hearts & Minds: The Interrogations Project , a VR work about US military torture in Iraq, he and his collaborators use immersive arts, storytelling and gaming technologies to introduce challenging accounts of human rights abuse.

Storytelling in VR, CAVES and other emerging forms: An interview with Roderick Coover by Katarzyna Boratyn

The following interview with Roderick Coover asks how emerging cinematic technologies transform documentary storytelling. Though his early ethnographic projects, such as Concealed Narratives (1996, filmed and photographed in Ghana) and the Harvest (1999, filmed and photographed in France), he created interactive documentary forms that could bridge modes of expression. The works combine field-notes, editing observations, exposition, travel narratives, encounters and interviews with evocative imagery. In works such as Voyage Into The Unknown (2007), Canyonlands (2009), and Estuary (2013). Coover uses scrolling map environments to offer interactive, cinematic experiences in which users create paths among video clips and data; the works explore spatial knowledge and storytelling, national myth-making and land use. In works such as Something That Happened Only Once (2007) and The Last Volcano (2011), he layers stories on animated panoramic settings to present disturbing disjunctions in the expression of place and memory. His recent collaborative works Three Rails Live (2013) and Toxicity: A Climate Change Narrative (2016) are algorithmic. They use code to combine voices and images from a database in an ever-changing order; the works use storytelling and new technologies to address the questions of climate change and industrial waste. In Hearts & Minds: The Interrogations Project, a VR work about US military torture in Iraq, he and his collaborators use immersive arts, storytelling and gaming technologies to introduce challenging accounts of human rights abuse.