Feeling the news? The differential effects of immersive journalism on emotional response
- Author(s)
- Hannah Greber, Sophie Lecheler, Loes Aaldering, Yael de Haan, Sanne Kruikemeier, Nele Goutier, Kiki de Bruin
- Abstract
Immersive journalism (IJ) is often assumed to be inherently emotion-inducing. Through using inclusive technology, interaction possibilities and immersive narratives, the audience should ideally experience what feels like to be in a certain situation. However, for the most part we do not know to which extent and in what form IJ influences the experience of emotions. We wanted to investigate, whether, and if so, which characteristics of IJ are related to the experience of emotions, and which role the personality trait empathy tendency plays in this respect. This is important, as the evaluation of IJ often relies on the emotion-inducing assumption thereof. Four different experiments comparing one immersive journalistic characteristic (level of inclusion, interaction possibilities, immersive narratives) to the respective non-immersive counterpart were conducted. Results indicate that while the level of inclusion and interaction possibility increase the intensity of the experience, the immersive narrative influences the valence dimension of emotions. Additionally, empathy tendency is found to be a relevant moderator for these effects. Conclusions are threefold. First, the narrative form of IJ is key; second, the analysis of IJ needs to go beyond the level of inclusion; third, including emotions when assessing IJ is fundamental to understand its impact.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Communication
- External organisation(s)
- HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, University of Amsterdam (UvA), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
- Journal
- Digital Journalism
- Volume
- 11
- Pages
- 39-60
- No. of pages
- 22
- ISSN
- 2167-0811
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2022.2155205
- Publication date
- 2022
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 508007 Communication science, 508014 Journalism
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/feeling-the-news-the-differential-effects-of-immersive-journalism-on-emotional-response(93fa234d-6bfe-4aac-959d-3b56e2bf7f81).html