Experiências e sensações: o consumo de jornalismo imersivo

Abstract

The research aims to analyze the relationship between the consumption of a journalistic event and immersive narrative, considering immersion, sense of presence, empathy, other experiences, and expressions. To meet the research objectives, a state-of-the-art on Immersive Journalism between 2010 and 2020 is systematized; the comprehension and apprehension of a journalistic event is investigated in an Immersive Journalism piece in 360 degrees; and assess how the experiences, immersions and sensations are obtained and perceived by five consumers from the consumption with Virtual Reality glasses and headphones of the empirical object “Rio de Lama: the greatest environmental tragedy in Brazil”. The 360-degree immersive journalistic piece records the experiences of residents, spaces, social, and environmental damage that occurred in the village of Bento Rodrigues, district of Mariana-MG in 2015. It is a qualitative research, in the modality of case study and with triangular methodological approach involving bibliographic research, consumption of the immersive piece (divided into questionnaire, observation, and semi-structured interviews) and content analysis of the interviews, observations, and questionnaires. The theoretical basis used starts from the notion that immersion (ARONSON-RAHT et al., 2015; DOMÍNGUEZ, 2013a, 2015, 2017) but on the interest in obtaining sensations, for example, the sensation of presence (DOMÍNGUEZ, 2013a; DE LA PEÑA et al., 2010; SLATER; WILBUR, 1997), empathy (DOMÍNGUEZ, 2013a; STEINFELD, 2019; BUJIC et al. 2020), and other subjective manifestations of each subject in immersive consumption. The work is structured in three chapters: 1) a state-of-the-art systematizing structural features of Immersive Journalism in the last decade (2010-19). Based on the Social Network Analysis (SNA) it presents structural characteristics of studies on the object and reviews the 20 most referenced researches in this period; 2) updated discussions on the subject published in 2020 in order to contribute to future studies. It also locates and revises eight researches related to the consumption of Immersive Journalism; 3) the content analysis of the consumption of the immersive piece with the aid of the IRAMUTEQ software, from the triangulation of the observations of each consumption with data obtained in semi-structured interviews and in the applied questionnaire, with the theoretical aspects adopted. The research finds that the consumption of the 360-degree immersive piece – “Rio de Lama” – carried out with different technologies of glasses, by users used to Virtual Reality and those not used to it, resulted in another understanding, different from the one they had about the event/tragedy before the consumption. The work recognizes that the feeling of presence and empathy are fundamental elements for Immersive Journalism to generate connection and sensitivity with the real event. The virtual presence provides credibility and contextualization of the journalistic event, thus confirming discussions put forward by Domínguez (2013a, 2015, 2017) and Pavlik (2001).