[Important note: I usually avoid posting Calls for Papers that involve the requirement that authors pay a fee for submission and/or publication but do so when the topic is particularly relevant to the presence community. In these cases, as with the Call below, I add an explicit note near the top of the post noting the fee requirement. For more information about the specific fees follow the link near the end of the Call, and for general information about publication fees, see AJE Scholar’s “Understanding Submission and Publication Fees” and Wikipedia’s entry on Article Processing Charges. –Matthew]
Call for Papers
The Many Dimensions of Us: Harnessing Immersive Technologies to Communicate the Complexity of Human Experiences
For the open access journal Media and Communication
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/pages/view/nextissues#ImmersiveTechnologies
Editor(s):
Nicholas David Bowman (Syracuse University), Dan Pacheco (Syracuse University), T. Makana Chock (Syracuse University), and Lyndsay Michalik Gratch (Syracuse University)
Important dates:
Submission of Abstracts: December 1-15, 2023
Submission of Full Papers: April 15-30, 2024
Publication of the Issue: October/December 2024
INFORMATION:
Human expression is tethered to and influenced by the tools available to us. From charcoal and berries on dark and cavernous walls to digital pencils and capacitive tablet computers, communication technologies exert profound impact over the stories we tell, both about ourselves and to each other (Schramm, 1988), along with how we tell them. In our expressions, we leverage our tools to create accessible and impactful versions of our experiences and perspectives with each other. Here, the emergence of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) technologies represents a profound-yet-burgeoning potential to enhance the veracity, artistry, and impact of these stories. Such technologies absorb and arrest the natural human senses (Biocca, 1997). In doing so, they enable us to directly place audiences inside our expressive creations—to feel a sense of presence inside and within the messages themselves (Lombard & Ditton, 1997). Milk (2015) argues that immersive technologies (specifically, VR) represent the “ultimate empathy machine[s]” that allow for the simulation and presentation of wholly unique perspectives—seen in the work of digital painters such as Anna Zhilyaeva and Emily Edwards and VR filmmakers such as Lynette Wallworth and Alejandro González Iñárritu, among others. Contrasting these views, research into the psychology of immersive experiences suggests that users can at times struggle to balance the myriad demands of immersive technologies (Bowman, 2021), which can reduce emotional reactions to or distance users from the narratives (Barreda-Ángeles et al., 2021). Additionally, research in media and visual culture studies suggests that VR may foster “false empathy,” as the empathy promoted or assured by VR industries assumes that experiences of immersion and first-person perspectives alone will drive empathetic feeling (Bender & Broderick, 2021; Bloom, 2017). Further, Lisa Nakamura (2020) argues that VR empathy experiences promote “identity tourism,”: when people in online spaces pretend to be members of marginalized groups with which they do not otherwise identify, generally for self-gain and with an exoticizing gaze. Nakamura posits, for example, that placing a white individual into a black body in VR is not a means toward empathy; it is false embodiment which leads to false empathy. Thus, a potential friction exists between the desire to express ourselves through immersive technologies and our audience’s ability to leverage the affordances of such technologies (Gaver, 1991) to meet this desire. As such interactions evolve in the direction of shared, social experience in current and future metaverse implementations, these opportunities and struggles become even more complex. Our thematic issue invites artists and scholars to share essays, research reports, creative digital works, and other forms of scholarship aimed at fostering a better understanding of the unique expressive potential of immersive digital media in various forms.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS:
Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal’s instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Media and Communication is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).
OPEN ACCESS:
The journal has an article publication fee to cover its costs and guarantee that the article can be accessed free of charge by any reader, anywhere in the world, regardless of affiliation. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and advise them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication fees. Institutions can also join Cogitatio’s Membership Program at a very affordable rate and enable all affiliated authors to publish without incurring any fees. Further information about the journal’s open access charges and institutional members can be found here.
REFERENCES
Barreda-Ángeles, M., Aleix-Guillaume, S., & Pereda-Baños, A. (2021). Virtual reality storytelling as a double-edged sword: Immersive presentation of nonfiction 360°-video is associated with impaired cognitive information processing. Communication Monographs, 88(2), 154–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2020.1803496
Bender, S. M., & Broderick, M. (2021). Virtual realities: Case studies in Immersion and phenomenology. Palgrave Macmillan.
Biocca, F. (1997). Cyborg’s dilemma; Progressive embodiment in virtual environments. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(2), Article JCMC324. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00070.x
Bloom, P. (2017). Empathy, schmempathy: Response to zaki. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(2), 60–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.12.003
Bowman, N. D. (2021). Interactivity as demand: Implications for interactive media entertainment. In C. Klimmt & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of media entertainment (pp. 647–670). Oxford University Press.
Gaver, W. W. (1991). Technology affordances. In S. P. Robertson, G. M. Olson, & J. S. Olson (Eds.), CHI ‘91: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 79–84). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/108844.108856
Lombard, M., & Ditton, T. (1997). At the heart of it all: The concept of presence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(2), Article JCMC321. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x
Milk, C. (2015, April). How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine [Video]. TED Conference. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine
Nakamura, L. (2020). Feeling good about feeling bad: Virtuous virtual reality and the automation of racial empathy. Journal of Visual Culture, 19(1), 47–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412920906259
Schramm, W. (1988). The story of human communication: Cave painting to microchip. Harper & Row.