Virtual Reality - A Tool to Promote Social Issues and Global Events

Research on Empathy and the Role of Virtual Reality in Social Issues 

Non-profit organizations and institutions often face the challenge of raising public awareness of social issues and persuading people to donate for a good cause. The problem is that despite many people are already informed about these issues, they remain passive observers. The concept of empathy seems to be the force that could make them act. Research conducted by Stanford University for more than a decade has found that Virtual Reality scenarios have the power to make users more empathetic on the depicted stories. The feelings of empathy increase understanding and motivate prosocial behaviors. Immersive technology is a tool that can be used to evoke this feeling. By creating scenarios inspired by social issues, users can gain first-person experience on the issue and feel a part of it.

Stanford’s experiment examined participants’ behavior on the issue of homelessness. Users had a higher and longer-lasting effect of empathy on the issue when experienced through a VR narrative than any other way. VR participants also developed a more positive attitude toward the topic, and most of them signed a petition for this issue afterward. Moreover, those who saw a visual depiction of this issue were more empathetic than those who were informed differently. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration when VR is described as the “ultimate empathy machine”, and global companies and organizations, such as Facebook and the United Nations, invest in projects such as Oculus’s “VR for Good”.

This new technology is a tool to enhance fundraising campaigns and make the public conscious of social issues. A case in point is “A walk through Dementia”, by Alzheimer's Research UK, in which users could see the life of people who live with this condition using VR technology. The great thing about this project is that anyone with a smartphone can experience it as it was accessible by the Google Cardboard app.

A Walk Through Dementia - Walking Home

Virtual Reality in Journalism

It seems that the power of virtual reality to immerse the audience into a real-life story and make them feel a part of it has been acknowledged by many of the news media giants as well. New York Times has already embraced virtual reality technology, as I have referred to the first block post (click to read).

Immersive journalism is “The production of news in a form in which people can gain first-person experiences of the events or situations described in news stories”.

CNN as well has launched CNNVR: an immersive journalism unit and VR platform integrated to CNN Digital. However, an impressive piece of this application was created and displayed by the World Economic Forum in Davos to persuade world leaders to act on the crucial issue of Syria’s war.

The “Project Syria” was written and directed by the “Godmother of Virtual Reality” journalist Nonny de la Peña. What is remarkable is that they have used video game software instead of a 360o camera to create a 3D environment with real-time graphics that allows the viewer to navigate around. The point was to create the illusion of being in this place and be a witness to the tragic events in Syria.

Project Syria

These examples can be an inspiration to communicators on how to attract and mobilize a latent audience on serious issues and a great alternative to written information and statistics. Even though such technology was pretty expensive to use, nowadays the mobile technology and applications such as Google Cardboard allows everyone to give it a try. And as Nonny de la Peña said in an interview: "Until you’ve done it, it’s very hard to understand its power". 

Find Nonny de la Peña on Twitter

To learn more about Immersive Technology click here.

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Sources:

A Walk Through Dementia. (n.d.). Retrieved June 18, 2020, from https://www.awalkthroughdementia.org/

CNN Digital Debuts its Virtual Reality Unit: CNNVR. (2017). Retrieved June 18, 2020, from https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2017/03/07/cnn-digital-vr-virtual-reality-cnnvr/

Garling, C. (2015, November 03). Virtual Reality, Empathy and the Next Journalism. Retrieved July 1, 2020, from https://www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/11/nonny-de-la-pena-virtual-reality-empathy-and-the-next-journalism/

Herrera, F., Bailenson, J.N., Weisz, E., Ogle, E. & Zaki J. (2018) Building long-term empathy: A large-scale comparison of traditional and virtual reality perspective-taking. PLoS ONE 13(10): e0204494. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0204494

Milk C. How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine [Internet]. TED: Ideas worth spread- ing. 2015. https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ ultimate_empathy_machine

Peña, N. D., Weil, P., Llobera, J., Spanlang, B., Friedman, D., Sanchez-Vives, M. V., & Slater, M. (2010). Immersive Journalism: Immersive Virtual Reality for the First-

Person Experience of News. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 19(4), 291-301. doi:10.1162/pres_a_00005