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’.
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 example, video triggers at key points in the virtual landscape remind a participant that the computer-generated environment is grounded in a real news story.
Scripted events that create a first person interaction with the reportage can also help create a feeling of “being there.” By using programming to move participants from one virtual location to the next, thus moving the embodied presence along the timeline, the experience employs “embodied edits.”[4] These experiences blur the line between recreations and cinema verité because audio and video captured live from the physical world (cinema verité material) is embedded throughout the computer-generated environment and encountered in scripted/programmed variations.
Often, players advance through the game by passing “levels” that do not necessarily relate to the inherently unchangeable nature of a nonfiction narrative (no matter from whose perspective it has been constructed).
However, it does not attempt to delineate any individual case in particular, and what happens to the player is based on his/her choices rather than reflecting the facts connected to one or more physical world events that have already transpired.
Perhaps key to clarifying the difference would be that immersive journalism uses an embodied experience in an unchangeable narrative that allows queries to the environment without changing any individual’s story trajectory.
This was a recreation of a real event and the experience proved to be journalistically accurate—after this immersive piece was complete, the British government released a video associated with the court trial over the death of civilian Baha Mousa.
However, some may consider this an entry point for criticism, claiming that immersive journalism undermines objectivity because the audience can be put through an experience with a controlled viewpoint.
While immersive journalism is a digital platform and therefore vulnerable to similar manipulation, if appropriate news and nonfiction best practices are applied, the experience can be built with journalistic and editorial integrity.