Students Investigate Immersive Journalism
Immersive Journalism is a controversial new trend in news media. With immersive journalism, the news source creates a virtual reality platform for the reader so that they can experience the story in a more dynamic way.
Ms. Cynthia Murphy’s Journalism class is exploring the pros and cons of Immersive journalism and its potential impact on the way that people experience the news. To help them understand virtual reality more completely, Hale Goodnow ’21 provided his classmates, and teacher, with a chance to experience a virtual reality scenario using his equipment.
Below are the Journalism students take on Virtual Reality:
The other week in class I got the opportunity to try Virtual Reality for the first time. It was a unique and exciting experience unlike any other. It manipulated a scenario of me walking on a plank above a city. It was scary and felt very real. I could see why people would want to incorporate this into the news industry. It could allow people who weren't at a news event to experience it as truthfully as possible. Overall, it was a cool experience that brought up a lot of good questions on how we could further this technology and to what extent? - Hillary ’21
VR is a tricky situation. It could revolutionize how we view media, but I think it might ruin some of the experiences altogether. For example, watching a movie in the theater. It is all about being together with friends, family or just the general public and laughing and enjoying the experience. VR could revolutionize that but where is the fun in watching a movie if you are alone with a headset on your head? We could bring the headset into the theater and have everyone use one and watch the movie independently, but that also ruins the experience. - Hale ’21
I thought that using VR was a really cool and eye-opening experience. It was my first time using VR and it gives a really different perspective that is good for people to experience. - Bijon ’20
I had never experienced virtual reality until I got to try on the Oculus VR device. I thought it was really cool and it was very different from what I was expecting. The video game we were playing on it was different from any other video game I have ever played. It made me feel like I was actually flying around a city and that I could crash at any second. - Blake ’20
I think Immersive Journalism is an interesting way to address current news. I think that the VR was cool and it was very wild and real. It was actually a little bit too real which kinda freaked me out a little. - Cody ’21
I believe that it is a good way to tell an important story and may draw people in a lot more. Most people like visuals more than reading anyways, so I think it is a good way to maybe inform more people on an issue. Virtual reality gives the participant access to real-life experience and other senses that they wouldn’t pick up on in a regular news article. I do not think immersive journalism should take over regular print journalism though, because there is something special about journalists writing pieces with just words too! - Ella B. ’20
I think immersive journalism could be an interesting tool that shows the whole story in a different perspective. It might bring more context to a story that words couldn’t be used to describe an event. In turns of virtual reality, the same goes. Under the right circumstances, VR can be used to enhance the learning experience. If there’s going to be any problems, it would come from either the poor implementation of the technology or maybe it’s too expensive to be used on a nation-wide scale. - Henry ’20
Vermont Academy is a coed college preparatory boarding and day school in southern Vermont, serving grades 9-12 plus a postgraduate year.
