The use of virtual reality technology seems to be effective in helping journalists to pull their audience into their stories. However, the story should not be too flashy, as an exaggeration of details may lead to a loss of credibility, according to a new study.

In a recent study, participants indicated that stories experienced in virtual reality – VR – significantly outperformed text-based articles in several categories. For instance, the VR stories were capable of giving them a sense of presence, literally the feeling of being there, and, as in a story lived in first person, increasing their empathy for the story’s characters, explained the distinguished professor of communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, Dr S. Shyam Sundar. Dr Sundar explained that using a cardboard VR viewer for experiencing 360-degree videos was more effective than interacting with the same videos on a computer screen, he noted.

“VR stories provide a better sense of being right in the midst of the story than text with pictures and even 360-degree video on a computer screen,” observed Sundar. “This is remarkable given that we used two stories from the New York Times Magazine, which were high quality and rich in imagery even in the text version.”

However, even though the effectiveness of virtual reality stories were superior to text and video, in terms of involvement of the participants, the researchers warned that the use of excessively flashy VR design elements may affect credibility and cause the participants to distance themselves from the story and have less trust in it. They found out that attempts of evoking an excessive sense of “being there” resulted in lower trustworthiness ratings of the New York Times.

“What really makes people trust VR more is that it creates a greater sense of realism compared to text and that creates the trustworthiness,” explained Sundar. “But, if it doesn’t give that sense of realism, it can affect credibility. If developers try to gamify it or make it more fantasy-like, for example, people may begin to wonder about the credibility of what they’re seeing.”

Nonetheless, the immersive quality of virtual reality and 360-degree video may effectively make the contents more shareable, according to the researchers. The findings were reported in the journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.

“Virtual reality is often called an empathy machine,” observed Sundar. “And, consistent with that thought, we did find that participants in both the VR and 360-degree video conditions were more empathetic toward the story characters than their counterparts in the text condition and they also reported higher intention to share the story with others.”

Clearly, these innovative solutions may represent a challenge for journalists with a limited budget. In such cases, these journalists may consider using 360-degree videos, which allow users to rotate their view, and are more immersive than the text-based story. While moving a step forward in the involvement of audience, compared to traditional text stories, these videos are still unable to match virtual reality’s ability to make the audience feel like they are literally in the story, explained Sundar.

“On many things 360-degree video on a computer does as well as viewing it on a VR viewer, so you might not need to go through the trouble of putting together the cardboard viewer and slipping in the phone to experience it,” he added. “But, for being transported to the scene of the action, the VR viewer beats it.”

However, the researchers noted that VR and 360-degree video require more attention, which can negatively affect readers’ recall of specific story’s details.

“We found some evidence to suggest that memory was affected by all the interaction with immersive journalism, but more research is needed to fully understand this effect,” observed Sundar.

The study involved 129 participants who were asked to either read two stories in a magazine, watch the stories using 360-degree video, or use a cardboard virtual-reality reader provided by the newspaper company through their mobile app to view the stories. The researchers asked volunteers to read two stories with different emotional intensity. The more emotional story – “The Displaced” – focused on the lives of three refugees. The other story – “The Click Effect” – examined marine biologists’ efforts to understand the vocalizations of dolphins. Looking at the general picture, the effects of immersive journalism were more evident with the less emotional story.

Written by: Pietro Paolo Frigenti

Journal Reference: Fulvio, J. M., Rokers, B. (2017). Use of cues in virtual reality depends on visual feedback. Scientific Reports, 7(1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-16161-3