VR Journalism: Musings on Concepts of Reality

„News has always been someone's attempt to gather a version of reality and present it to the rest of us." Journalist Cory Corinne wrote this in her 2026 Nieman Lab Prediction for Journalism. People have been obsessed with the idea, or, depending on your point of view, the myth of "reproducing reality" ever since methods of representation have existed, such as painting or photography (Meng and Zhang, 2022, p.286). Then VR entered the mix – and things got philosophically messy: Are "real" experiences merely simulated by VR – or are they their own, new reality? Can there even be more than one?

On concepts of reality in media

Let's start off with communication scientist Günter Bentele and his very basic definition of "reality" (don't say duh): It encompasses everything that ever existed, exists or will exist (2008, p.280). Yet, in a sense, reality is always constructed, filtered and influenced by individual perception, isn't it? 

As anthropologists Daniel Miller and Heather A. Horst put it, "digital studies often use the term virtual in a way that implies contrast with the real" (2021, p.27). But are they opposites? The virtual reality continuum, for instance, suggests that VR isn't some new, radically different type of reality, but rather an extension of what exists physically.

"[...] the result of reality as specifically perceived and shaped by our media" is what Bentele calls media realities (2008, pp.68–70). According to this, an anti-government protest is reality; the news coverage of it is media reality. There's an assumption that media reality, on principle, carries a "distortion factor" compared to "actual" reality – because it's always curated and selected (Bentele, 2008, pp.68–70). Following this line of reasoning, whatever virtual reality journalists create, should also have another "actual" reality as its counterpart.

Media scholar Christian Stiegler, too, claims that media has always had the power to construct realities (2015, pp.183–185). To him, the world shown in media and the world outside of it are never truly the same thing. Now, one might argue that VR is different. That it doesn't just re-construct reality but creates it. To Stiegler, however, it's still just a staged production (2015, pp.185–193).

There's another concept worth knowing here: constructivism. The idea that no single „objective" reality exists, because the moment we perceive something, we interpret it through our own memories and senses. We each build our own version of reality – including virtual reality. It might be shaped and presented by journalists, but audiences are the ones who ultimately make sense of what they see.

How "real" or "fictional" is VR journalism?

In a way, VR worlds are compact, comprehensible – in contrast to the increasingly elusive complexity of "reality." They contain images from the real world, feed on everyday discourse, which is then translated into a story and "[...] creatively processed into designs of a world that does not exist [...], but can be imagined" (cf. Risi et al., 1998, p.289). Now, one might say that when a journalistic story is re-created interactively in VR it immediately becomes fictional to some extent; you find yourself in a journalistic world enriched with 3D objects, making you wonder: what is real and what isn't?

The question of how closely VR journalism reflects "reality" matters. Nonny de la Peña et al. note that the genre has faced one particular criticism: that "[...] it may strain the credibility of journalistic integrity, undermining the ability to bring the true facts to the public" (2010, p.299). But the authors push back on this by arguing that VR journalism ensures that facts, and thus reality, are not only presented but made tangible (De la Peña et al., 2010, p.299). Instead of just reading about it, immersive journalism lets you experience a reality that is foreign to you in a way that approximates how it actually happened.

Objectivity norms in VR journalism

Perhaps you could already tell, but it seems questions about media realities and VR journalism are inseparable from questions about "journalistic objectivity". Media mistrust always circles back to how journalists select and frame information – however, identifying "bias" often assumes that unbiased, "objective" reality exists somewhere outside the story.

So, what do people mean when they say, "objective reporting"? Well, at its core, it's about representing reality as accurately as possible (Bentele, 2008, pp.70–72). The objectivity standard exists to keep the gap between reality, media reality, and reality as perceived by viewers from growing too big (Bentele, 2008, p.288). 

Now, take Nonny De la Peña's immersive piece Project Syria, for example: It draws on real footage and audio – yet it was composed retrospectively and, of course, edited. It could even be called – gasp – somewhat subjective. Because someone always chooses how information gets presented. It's not so unusual; it's just more visible in print or 2D video, where audiences know they're outside observers. In VR, the seams are harder to see.

That's because VR's immersive power is highly suggestive: recipients step out of their observer role and feel like they're part of the story. The line between watching and being there is blurred (Liesem, 2018, p.89). Therefore, it would be important for the public to have a clear understanding of what constitutes "objective" reporting in VR (i.e. reporting that stays true to facts) – both to ensure a degree of transparency and to help alleviate concerns about the potential spread of misinformation (Bentele, 2008, p.330).

There are always different perspectives on a topic – which can also complement each other. Telling journalistic stories through VR doesn't necessarily have to mean a distortion of reality or facts (Bentele, 2008, p.286). The objectivity norm has never been uniformly applied across journalistic genres anyway. For example, it carries far greater weight in political reporting than in culture or sports (where VR happens to be more widely used) (Bentele, 2008, p.319).

Let's get philosophical

Ultimately, there are many ways to define "reality". You can view "actual" or physical reality and media reality (including VR reporting) as strictly separate from one another; consider them to be different but see a fluid transition between them; or assume that the concept of reality encompasses both and that no reality is less "real" than the other.

Australian philosopher David Chalmers, for example, claims "virtual reality is genuine reality". Building on his thesis, there's also this paper by Paweł Grabarczyk about "virtual physicalism", suggesting virtual objects should be seen and treated as real and physical „as they are identical to the physical states of computers that run VR software".

We'd have to agree on something: is there only one reality or are there several? If there's just one, does it include or exclude media forms of representation? You could say that the virtual realities made by journalists are no less real, true or genuine than any other reality – because people experience in them, process them as real, which raises even more questions: Is something that feels real automatically real, or, in the case of VR, just an illusion? What would be wrong with saying that illusions are part of our perception of reality, and thus part of reality itself?

Who creates virtual realities in journalism?

Let me throw one last notion at you and go full academic for a moment (and remember, it's all a starting point for discussion, not proof or verdict, but a hypothesis).

Reality isn't a fixed thing – it's made. By more parties than you might think.

Enter Karen Barad's agential realism. The feminist physicist and philosopher developed the concept in response to the question of how we perceive the world and how we know what's real. She argues that reality doesn't exist independently of observation – it emerges from the interaction between observer and observed (Barad, 2020, p.575). Therefore, the world and our perception of it are inseparable. To Barad, matter, or everything that humans aren't, isn't passive backdrop; it's an active participant in the creation of reality (Barad, 2020, p.581). This dismantles the anthropocentric assumption that humans are the sole architects of reality.

Applied to VR journalism, it means the answer to "who brings virtual reality(ies) to life?" is never just "the VR journalists". In my first post on my M.A. thesis, I've written that users can pretty much do whatever they want in VR. They don't have to follow a script as intended by journalists; they can run around and ignore the, say, blinking red arrow to their left. Sociologist Madeleine Akrich calls this re-scription: users redirecting and subverting a creator's intended program (Akrich, 1992, pp.207–209, cited in Endter, 2020, p.166).

Users aren't passive sponges in VR, instead, they interpret the experience through their own lense. Sounds familiar? That's because it resonates with media constructivism: "There is no reality without a perceiver who (re-)constructs it" (Stiegler, 2015, pp.185–186). The old "we write, you read" model of journalism doesn't hold here. You might even say users can now create their own journalistic VR experience in tandem with journalists when wearing a headset (Thomas, 2022, pp.143–144). VR researcher Sarah Jones also suggests shifting from storytelling to storyliving – letting audiences build their own understanding rather than being handed a narrative (2021, p.92).

One last thing. In my field of study, cultural anthropology, the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is a big one. It ditches the old human-vs-"things" division and maps relationships between everything – people, objects, and ideas alike (Niewöhner et al., 2012, p. 30; Dietzsch, 2020, p.79). All kinds of entities really. As Tom Mathar, expert for Science and Technology studies, puts it, non-human actors "send those entangled with them down specific paths of action, co-producing what occurs" (2012, pp.184–185).

Applied to VR, this means a headset, for instance, isn't passive hardware but an active participant, a sensory extension producing reality while simultaneously being shaped by designers who build or use it (cf. Barad, 2020, pp.589–591). Or: a VR story interacts with users while also reflecting the decisions of the journalists who configured it (cf. Endter, 2020, p.66). And immersion isn't just something a headset delivers to a user either – it's built between them. There are many "actor-networks". Barad even replaces "interaction" with "intra-action" to make the point that entities don't just influence each other, but define each other through the process (Lemke, 2020, p.564).

Both ANT and agential realism lead to this conclusion: nobody and nothing is just a passive bystander. Media professionals, users, VR tech, and even journalistic stories form interlocking networks through their ongoing interactions that co-constitute new, virtual realities (cf. Meng and Zhang, 2022, p.285). Reality in immersive journalism is always collaborative.

Sources

Key Visual

Photo by Tobias Bjerknes on Unsplash.

Literature

Some quotes have been translated from German into English by the author of this blogpost.

Akrich, Madeleine: The De-Scription of Technical Objects. In: Bijker, E. Wiebe and Law, John (Eds.): Shaping Technology/ Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge (MA)/ London 1992, pp.205–224.

Barad, Karen: Agentieller Realismus. In: Bauer, Susanne; Heinemann, Torsten and Lemke, Thomas (Eds.): Science and Technology Studies. Klassische Positionen und aktuelle Perspektiven. Berlin 2020, pp.574–643.

Bentele, Günter: Objektivität und Glaubwürdigkeit: Medienrealität rekonstruiert. Wiesbaden 2008.

De la Peña, Nonny et al.: Immersive Journalism: Immersive Virtual Reality for the First-Person Experience of News. In: Slater, Mel (Ed.): Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. Volume 19, Issue 4. Cambridge (MA) 2010, pp.291–301.

Endter, Cordula: Assistiert Altern. Die Entwicklung digitaler Technologien für und mit älteren Menschen. Hamburg 2020.

Jones, Sarah: It's not just about Empathy. Going beyond the empathy machine in immersive journalism. In: Uskali, Turo et al. (Eds.): Immersive Journalism as Storytelling. Ethics, Production, and Design. Oxon/ New York 2021, pp.82–95.

Lemke, Thomas: Einführung (Neue Materialismen). In: Bauer, Susanne; Heinemann, Torsten and Lemke, Thomas (Eds.): Science and Technology Studies. Klassische Positionen und aktuelle Perspektiven. Berlin 2020, pp.551–573.

Liesem, Kerstin: Suggestivkraft 4.0. In: Von Lewinski, Kai (Ed.): Immersiver Journalismus. Technik – Wirkung – Regulierung. Bielefeld 2018, pp.81–97.

Mathar, Tom: Akteur-Netzwerk Theorie. In: Niewöhner, Jörg; Sørensen, Estrid and Beck, Stefan (Eds.): Science and Technology Studies. Eine sozialanthropologische Einführung. Bielefeld 2012, pp.173–190.

Meng, Jing and Zhang, Shixin Ivy: Immersive Journalism and New Audience Relationship. In: Manninen, Ville J. E.; Niemi, Mari K. and Ridge-Newman, Anthony (Eds.): Futures of Journalism. Technology-stimulated Evolution in the Audience-News Media Relationship. Cham (Switzerland) 2022, pp.281–294.

Miller, Daniel and Horst, Heather A.: Six principles for a digital anthropology. In: Geismar, Haidy and Knox, Hannah (Eds.): Digital Anthropology, 2nd Edition. London/ New York 2021, pp.21–43.

Niewöhner, Jörg; Sørensen, Estrid and Beck, Stefan: Einleitung. Science and Technology Studies aus sozial- und kulturanthropologischer Perspektive. In: Niewöhner, Jörg; Sørensen, Estrid and Beck, Stefan (Eds.): Science and Technology Studies. Eine sozialanthropologische Einführung. Bielefeld 2012, pp.9–48.

Risi, Marius et al.: Das Hirn in der Kiste. Zum Verhältnis von Technik in der virtuellen Welt der Computerspiele. In: Hengartner, Thomas and Rolshoven, Johanna (Eds.): Technik – Kultur. Formen der Veralltäglichung von Technik – Technisches als Alltag. Zürich 1998, pp.263–290.

Stiegler, Christian: Medienrealität(en). Zur Konstruktion medialer Wirklichkeiten. In: Stiegler, Christian; Breitenach, Patrick and Zorbach, Thomas (Eds.): New Media Culture: Mediale Phänomene der Netzkultur. Bielefeld 2015, pp.181–194.

Thomas, Ryan J.: The Welcome Persistence of „We Write, You Read" Journalism. In: Manning, Ville J. E.; Niemi, Mari K. and Ridge-Newman, Anthony (Eds.): Futures of Journalism. Technology-stimulated Evolution in the Audience-News Media Relationship. Cham (Switzerland) 2022, pp.143–158.