Ethical dilemmas raised by Immersive journalism

Today’s world has experienced a major revolution in the way that stories are told. Content producers embrace new technologies such as AR, MR and VR to narrate their stories. Hunger in LA is considered as the first piece of immersive journalism produced by Nonny de la Pena where narration was supplemented with new technology in order to provide users with a first-person experience. Immersive journalism as a new concept provides an interactive, first-person experience with news stories, which can boost empathy. However, immersive journalism faces ethical challenges that need to be tackled. By conducting interviews with 20 experts, which were analyzed by constant comparative technique, this paper examines the ethical dilemmas raised by immersive journalism regarding the journalist’s perspective and the side effects that it might have on users. The findings reveal that immersive journalism producers should consider the existence of a paradox which has made journalistic pieces only accessible to a minority of people though they are supposed to be publicly available, pay very close attention to radical shifts in the way stories are told and impose regulations to guarantee transparency, truthfulness, responsible storytelling and data gathering, and children protection. In terms of the side effects on users, it also suggests that immersive journalism not only involves the risks associated with a significant subjective opinion portrayed on issues, loss of realism and direction, manipulation of the scene and deep fake but also needs complete awareness of how content impacts the viewer.