192. Name: Radwa Mabrook Title: Virtual Reality and Journalistic Culture: An Actor-Network Theory Approach (the Cases of Al Jazeera, the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times and PBS)
Institution: City University Country: United Kingdom Date: 2019 Language: English Abstract:
This study examines the relationship between VR and journalistic culture. It identifies the dramatic changes in journalistic practice and the emerging cultures of work in VR content creation. The study focuses on how these changes interact with normative ideals, such as facticity, accuracy, objectivity, detachment and transparency, drawing on Actor Network Theory and sociological explorations of journalistic culture. The researcher used methodological triangulation of semi-structured interviews with fact-based content creators and social semiotic analysis of VR content. The interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of thirty content creators between November 2017 and April 2018. The social semiotic study analyzed and compared a sample of sixteen VR pieces produced by Al Jazeera, the BBC, the Guardian, New York Times and PBS, the US public broadcaster. The findings indicated that the significant change of journalistic practice in VR does not reflect a corresponding change in content creators’ normative understandings of journalism. They insist that their normative understandings remain unchanged. The findings also indicated that the emerging cultures of work in VR are not new, they have existed in narrative, entrepreneurial and interactive data-driven journalism.
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