Multimodal Argument
Media's Negative Take on Virtual Reality
Virtual reality is generating worlds of possibility for well-established companies and new startups alike. While many uses are purely within the entertainment realm (namely video games and film), there are also quite a number of applications beneficial to our welfare. However, the field of “entertainment” that could benefit the most from this new technology is the media. With the double-edged motives of updating people with information and increasing the viewer-count, the media relies heavily on our emotional response, particularly our tendency to pay more attention to negativity. Global aid organizations and charities especially rely on this negativity bias in order to evoke the sympathy of the well-off towards the not-so-well-off, ultimately increasing donations. A journalist named Abe Streep has examined a particular startup named Ryot using Virtual Reality to bring donators closer to the scene of relief. Exactly how successful Ryot is in evoking the empathy of its viewers can be judged by contrasting Streep’s own traditional journalistic approach to the immersive techniques of the startup. While the traditional journalism Streep utilizes lacks the immersive interaction that VR offers, Ryot fails to exploit this immersive potential fully.
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The story of the startup’s ambitious and almost noble attempt to revolutionize the media with VR starts with the company name: Ryot. As their name suggests, they are in rebellion of traditional media modes and promote the use of virtual reality to tell a journalism story. One of their notable VR films is the 360-degree footage of the aftermath of an earthquake in Nepal, named the Nepal Quake Project. Take a few minutes to view the YouTube video of the film above.
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The film attempts to bring its viewers to the scene in order to make them feel as if they were actually there in real time. However, this use of virtual reality is more of a 360-degree camera than an actual simulation of a real scene in a virtual world; it does not incorporate the movement or interaction of the viewer and is only virtual in the aural and visual modes. The book Writer/Designer (Arola, Sheppard, Ball) does well to define more than just these two usual modes, listing linguistic, visual, aural, spatial, and gestural as the mode categories. While the film uses the linguistic mode to narrate in a grave and serious tone, evoking our negativity bias and urging us to donate more than just our time watching the film, it does not allow us to move spatially or interact with the scene in any way except for moving the camera.
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As a virtual reality experience, the Nepal Quake Project is not very revolutionary. However, as a piece of film and as a piece of media, the project is subtly different from the movies we are used to watching in theaters and the columns we read in newspapers; it allows the viewer to selectively choose what they are viewing. In contrast to Streep’s article, this use of journalism relies more on the sensory modes than the linguistic mode, which is Streep’s primary mode as a journalist. Additionally, the film gives the viewer freedom to choose the viewing space in a side-scrolling manner, while Streep’s article forces the reader to scroll-down and read the text like a script.
Introductory paragraphs of Streep's article.
Streep begins the article in an attempt to recreate the scene of refugees on a Greek island in several long blocks of text that could be easily summed up in one picture, using novel-like narrative to paint a colorful word picture. Using a large typographed “F” and bolding the first few words emphasizes this storytelling-oriented style. The heavy reliance on the linguistic mode even when pictures would be highly preferred is a testament to his newpaper-like journalism, which can be seen as a more traditional approach. Though I say “colorful”, he uses dull phrases such as “dressed in black” and “a gray Zodiac” to convey the graveness of the situation.
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What is particularly striking about Streep’s rhetoric is the way the images in the article complement the linguistic text. Scrolling down the paragraphs that introduce the company RYOT and its key leaders, the image of its CEO Bryn Mooser seems to appear out from the blank space:
While the visual mode used here is in the form of a static image and does not bring any sense of “the scene” to the viewer, it is quite effective in evoking a feeling: the feeling of being looked down on by an intimidating man who is in control. The fact that he seems to appear from thin air evokes a feeling of suddenness: “Then came the commercial VR surge” (Streep). The abruptness and power in the pop-up image is much like the shock factor that many media outlets use to draw out the feelings of the audience. As a traditional journalist, Streep relies on exaggerated language and images to draw out the more negative feelings of his readers. As rebels against the traditional journalistic approaches, the Ryot company seems to rely less on the shock factor and more on the reality of an experience to convey the truth.
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Accordingly, Streep’s presentation of Ryot is quite contrary to the image of a big news company; the people of Ryot are shown to be relatable, start-up, and eager to be “true” rather than “biased”. He says Ryot “is run by experienced filmmakers, but they enthusiastically embrace a figure-it-out-on-the-fly approach” (Streep). Using such word choices as “enthusiastic”, “embrace”, and “figure-it-out” shows that these filmmakers are just as flawed and human as the viewers, and not cold-hearted robots that pump out articles, videos, and news like factories. In a way this is an attempt to make the reader empathetic to Ryot. Streep’s traditional use of words, whether to incite feelings of pity or connection, can be considered an “empathy tool”, just not as effective as some VR approaches claim to be.
Just right before scrolling down to the end of the paragraph.
Streep’s image presents Ryot employees as down-to earth, pratical, and truthful people, especially by the mission statement being replaced by the poignant statement “There’s a war going on”.
But how exactly is VR used as an “empathy tool”? In this article by Joanna Goodman, the author expands on Darg’s claim “VR can create empathy like never before” (Streep) by explaining how immersive technology can create a sort of “electronic empathy”. Goodman adds “Immersive technology creates empathy by putting the individual at the centre of every experience”, and chooses to show this concept rather than tell through the VR story of an epileptic:
The video the Nepal Quake Project is a similar demonstration of VR’s practical use as a media/empathy tool. However, it fails to immerse the viewer in the same first-person perspective as Jane Gauntlett’s demonstration ‘In My Shoes’. The piece uses multi-sensory immersion, motion, and narration from a first-person perspective to draw the “experiencer” closer to Gauntlett’s actual experience with epilepsy. The fact that the audience of Ryot’s film are “viewers” while the audience of Gauntlett’s piece are “experiencers” is testament to the large amount of potential in multimodal rhetoric lost by Ryot’s use of virtual reality. Especially considering that the narration in Nepal Quake Project is comparable to Streep’s traditional use of the linguistic mode in that it relies on an exaggerated and grave tone, Ryot fails to use the linguistic mode in the same convincing first-person perspective as Gauntlett.
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As a traditional journalist, Streep is a little effective in immersing the reader and evoking their empathy, but the potential to evoke empathy is much greater by using VR technologies as shown by Goodman. Ryot also fails to utilize virtual reality’s multimodal tools to evoke empathy when compared to Gauntlett’s demonstration, but they certainly do realize the potential of VR to “create empathy like never before” (Streep). Ryot also claims about VR that “It’s the ultimate fund-raising tool”, which blurs the line between noble goal of connecting humans’ emotions across the world and the practical worth of evoking empathy. If the media remains completely reliant on drawing us towards the negative and grave side of the news, will virtual reality become too harsh for us to willingly experience? Will people truly donate more and help relief organizations help others, or will we be too caught up in the negativity to help?
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September 19, 2016
