A new platform, Emblematic, allows those consuming news to be inside the story through VR simulation.
As a society we are becoming numb to all the devastating news we’re bombarded with on a daily basis. In order to react in an empathetic way to news and want to make a difference, we need to see life through the eyes of those affected by tragedy. Now, the media company Emblematic Group uses virtual reality (VR) simulation to put users in the middle of breaking news stories.
The platform is designed to help people understand what it feels like to face a natural or human-made disaster. The company’s CEO, former journalist Nonny de la Peña, has developed the idea as the next frontier of journalism, explaining that ‘It wasn’t until I started working with virtual reality that I started to see really intense reactions from people to news stories.’
The team creates and stages room-scale VR environments that place the user inside the story, allowing them to move through the action. For example, their VR simulation of a situation in which a man has a diabetic seizure because of lack of food is intended to be an immediate way to communicate the problems facing society – more effective than real-life immersive videos and images.
Emblematic has already collaborated with media partners including The New York Times, Google and Al Jazeera America. In 2016 the company was awarded a grant from the Knight Foundation to produce a series of VR documentaries in partnership with Frontline, and to collaborate on crafting and disseminating best practices for virtual reality journalism.
The company has already created a piece of ‘immersive journalism’, telling the story of the day teenager Travyon Martin was shot and killed by a neighbourhood watch volunteer. The piece was produced exclusively from real recordings of 911 calls, witness trial testimony and architectural drawings, with an emphasis on accuracy.
There is, however, a risk that this form of reporting in the wrong hands could be used irresponsibly. As much as we would like to think we are being provided with an impartial recounting of events, it is almost impossible to find a news outlet or publication without its own biases and agendas in some form. These content providers are able to shape the way a story comes across by the words and pictures they choose to use. As VR reporting falls somewhere in between showing real footage and creating a reconstruction, there is certainly scope for this grey area to be exploited and certain biases to be interwoven into the experience. With VR, because users are totally immersed in what is happening and therefore emotionally vulnerable, they are even more susceptible to manipulation and misinformation. As news reporting evolves, so too must the system of checks and balances we as a society have in place to ensure a free, open and responsible media.
A similar idea is the Virtual Reality Cave, which puts recovering drug addicts in high-stimulus environments so that they can learn coping mechanisms. Through trial and error, over the coming years we will discover the full potential of virtual reality, the areas in which it is useful and other areas where it is potentially problematic.
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Website: www.emblematicgroup.squarespace.com
Contact: emblematicgroup.squarespace.com/contact-us/
Innovation name: Emblematic
Country: United States
Industries: Education / Entertainment & culture