Shel Burton
sb800216@ohio.edu
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a science fiction novel. Tech-savvy homebodies stoke flames of dissent across the US from their couch, and life-like, computer-generated faces feature in advertisements and stock photos. Thanks to virtual reality (VR) gaming I can be stabbing zombies in NOLA while my roommate asks Alexa to order us Domino's.
Sometimes I can't help but curl up into a ball and wonder "where does it stop? When do things go bad?" Being a college student, I consider myself pretty young. Not young enough to understand Roblox, but not old enough to remember the dial-up tone either. As technology continues to outpace legislation and--at times--human comprehension, I can't imagine no one else is asking these questions.
One such group is journalists, who are so dependent on technology that a 2017 study showed that 66 percent of journalists engage with their readers through social media at least once a day. However, most journalists know how to engage with readers through social media and generally have a code of ethics to fall back on. When it comes to VR...not so much.
Because of VR, news viewers could potentially experience the sights and sounds of events. In a society that covets experiences and immersive entertainment, no one can be blamed for wanting to tap into the possibilities of it all. However, with so much misinformation the combination of news and VR can feel like opening Pandora's box. After an election fraught with contradicting, conflicting, and incorrect news, you'd have every right to be wary of the potential dangers.
An article from Medium.com discussed the ethics of virtual reality within journalism, especially, what rules would have to be in place to make it a viable form of news media. As usual, transparency is of the utmost importance. While VR may look and sound real, it isn't and journalists would have to be transparent about that and images within VR that are edited. They'd also have to decide when VR is appropriate. Today, some of our news stories are written and others can be watched online and on TV. The same would have to apply to VR. For example, most people wouldn't like to be in VR during a crime report. There's also something to be said about the emotional impact of VR, is it a tool to immerse the viewer in the news story to get a better understand of the situation or to emotionally manipulate them?
VR is a powerful tool and with great power comes great responsibility. While the technology of tomorrow will inevitably become today's, I'm glad we're asking these questions now.
Shel, this is a really interesting topic to explore. I actually participated in an experiment testing news VR last year and it was a super cool experience. However, as you brought up there are a lot of different ethical problems that are also introduced with it. Personally when I think of VR, entertainment is the first word that comes to mind. I find it a little uncomfortable to think of the different news stories that could be VR. I'm sure if this becomes more common, lines will have to be drawn somewhere.
ReplyDeleteAwesome post, Shel! I have always only known virtual reality to be a tool of entertainment, like in video games or some futuristic concept explained on TV, and never something that could be effectively utilized as a news media tool. I think there are definitely certain areas of news that it'd be better suited for than others, and I'm excited to see the transformation of news media with innovations like VR!
ReplyDeleteI like this post! I remember when I came here to look at OU as a junior in high school, one of the departments should me their virtual reality set and I really thought it was cool, even though it was still being worked on. I definitely think that virtual reality could be used as a news media tool and I think could really change how the news is used and even viewed. To make news be virtual would be quite the step in technology.
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