Articulo_9-EN-Viewers_immersion-HTML-2

2. The immersive feature: concept and basic foundations

Framed within a cross-and transmedia journalistic scenario (Martínez & Torrado, 2017: 153), the main peculiarity of immersive journalism is the possibility of “moving” the spectators to the event, giving journalists “the ability to create in the audience a sensation of being present in the distance, in places of journalistic interest and in events” (Biocca & Levy, 1995: 137). This is possible through a representation in which the viewer is located in the center of a spherical stage, with a first-person perspective and a mobile point of view that can change freely. This possibility has its origin in the games narrative (Domínguez: 2010 and 2013), where the user, represented through an avatar, interacts within a virtual environment generated by computer (Martín, 2015). This new format shares traits with other interactive journalistic formulas such as the situated documentary, the webdocor interactive documentary, and the newsgames or informative videogames. However, the 360º video narrative presents the singularity that the viewer cannot intervene in the course of the action. Interaction refers here to the possibility of accepting the perspective previously chosen by the director or opting for a different one, placing himself in alternative parts of an event and, in some cases, accessing additional information (Pryor, 2010).

This type of representation has contributed to the appearance of a new modality of a classic journalistic genre: the immersive feature, that can be defined as:

“A model of reality representation that narrates and describes facts and actions of human interest from real images recorded in 360º video and that uses immersive technologies to generate in the participant the illusion of being present in the event from the first-hand perspective from which the viewer can better understand the circumstances, identify with the protagonists and even experience the emotions that accompany the reality that is being represented” (Benítez & Herrera, 2017: 165).

To reach this definition, we have followed a double approach. On the one hand, we have conducted an exhaustive literature review on different contributions from:

i) the study of literary, journalistic and audiovisual narratives (Genette, 1989, Cebrián Herreros, 1992, Martín Vivaldi, 1993, Gaudreault & Jost, 1995, Chillón, 1999, Martínez Albertos, 2000, Casetti & Di Chio, 2007, and Carmona, 2010);

ii) the study of immersive narratives (Lunenfeld, 1993, Ryan 2004 and 2005, Dinmore, 2008, De la Peña, et al. 2010, Domínguez, 2013, Gifreu, 2013, Dolan & Parets, 2015, Martín, 2005, Jiménez, Paíno & Rodríguez Fidalgo, 2016, Domínguez, 2017 and Hardee & McMahan, 2017); and

iii) the study of the psychological components implied in virtual environments (Heeter, 1992, Ijsselsteijn, Freeman & De Ridder, 2001, Cohen, 2001, Sánchez Vives & Slater, 2005, Igartua, 2007, Muñiz & Igartua, 2008, Slater, 2009, Slater, et al., 2009 and 2010, Tal-Or & Cohen, 2010 and Igartua & Fiuza, 2018), among others.

Along with this theoretical review, we have viewed more than 1,000 features of this kind published by leading national and international media, during the last three years. From this study, we have obtained a series of traits that help us define the basic characterization of this feature. These traits can be classified into four groups depending their relation to: basic journalistic characteristics, formal characteristics, psychological characteristics and technical characteristics (Benítez & Herrera, 2017). For this comparative analysis, we will focus on the first two groups.