Every media technological innovation in history has greatly promoted the rapid development of journalism. In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR), which has just emerged, has been applied in journalism and become the focus of innovation for traditional media to cope with the impact of new media, which has also attracted the attention of the academic circle of news communication.

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As a typical representative of the media environment, American scholar Paul Levinson believes that the media environment has the survival of the fittest mechanism just like the biological nature.[] In nature, information, as a basic element, retains dynamic evolution through the influence form of information technology and media.Levinson sums up the three stages that media go through in technological development. They are, in turn, "toys", "mirrors" and "art". At present, VR, as a medium, is in the first half of its development process, namely, "toy" and "mirror", which compare VR games and VR applications respectively. So can VR news keep innovating in the evolution of media like newspaper, radio or TV, or take a place in the media ecosystem of the future era?

 

I. DEVELOPMENT of VR technology and application of VR news

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The concept of virtual reality, is in the early 1980 s, by the American computer scientists, VPL, jaron lanier, puts forward the founder of the company: is a kind of computer simulation is used to derive a virtual world, create more source integration of interactive 3 d dynamic visual of high and new technology, can be vivid sensory experience such as vision, hearing, touch, users get beyond the reality of telepresence.At present, virtual reality (VR) has become one of the top technologies in science and technology development. China has also included it in the information plan of the 13th Five-Year Plan, vigorously promoting the "media +VR technology".[1] Zumu Retiguli Mutalifu. Application of Virtual Reality News in CCTV News Report [J]. Satellite TV and Broadband Multimedia, 2020 (2)]

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In the world, the Des Moines Chronicle of Gannett Newspaper Group, the largest newspaper group in the United States, created the first explanatory news project "Harvest of Change" in 2013, which is believed to be the first time to use VR technology in news reports, marking the real rise of VR technology in the American press. In 2015, the New York Times launched its "NYT VR" virtual reality APP, which is considered to be the official start of VR+ news.[Zhang Ruifeng.VR+ News: New Exploration in the New Media Era [J]. Audio-visual, 2017 (10)] In China, VR+ news roughly started in 2015.CCTV News launched its "Immersion News" column on its official website in 2016, becoming one of the early media in China to set up its own VR channel. In 2019, CCTV News launched an independent "VR channel" on the mobile app. During the epidemic, CCTV launched a special "Panoramic view of the Front Line of the battle" report, which restored the situation of the front line through VR technology 360°, attracting extensive attention from the society.

 

II. VR news's remedy to the old student media

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Paul Levinson's media evolution theory covers three theories of "remedial media theory", "humanized trend theory" and "soft media determinism". Paul Levinson used remedial media theory to explain the development of media.From news agencies to newspapers, radio, television and new media, the media has become more humanized and more suitable for the needs of human beings to spread information. This process of the young media replacing the old media with a more perfect, more humanized and more highly involved audience is known as the process of "remediation", so the new media has a "remediation" effect on the old media.

 

i. Immersive experience extends the audience's perception ability

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The rise of new media has brought new interactive experience to the audience, and VR technology has brought such interactive experience to the extreme.In the virtual world carefully created by professional technicians, the audience can experience VR news with a strong sense of immersion through dissemination through corresponding output devices. For example, McLuhan proposed that "media is an extension of human beings". Existing video news delivers information to the audience through audio-visual communication, and when the audience reads a VR news, they can simultaneously feel text, sound, video, interaction and motion sensing information. Therefore, in addition to the audio-visual extension, VR news also extends the audience's mind, which brings audiences a sense of immersion far greater than that of other traditional media.

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VR technology has remedied the old media. The immersive interactive experience enables the audience's sensory ability to be infinitely extended and expanded in VR news, which meets the human needs for news telepresence.

 

ii. Participatory experience enhances the audience's empathy

 

The theory of human trends was first proposed by Paul Levinson in The Playback of Human History.Newspapers rely on our linear thinking, radio depends on our hearing and linear thinking, and TELEVISION serves our vision, hearing and linear thinking. The change of media makes it more difficult for us to receive information, and meanwhile, the media has become more humanized in the evolution.[]

 

VR news breaks the traditional montage narrative mode. In the virtual world, audiences experience the process of news as participants. It is precisely with interactivity that the audience will be more willing to believe what is happening in front of them when watching the news and will be more easily moved. In 2015, on the "central kitchen" platform set up by People's Daily for the media industry, technicians used VR technology to produce a panoramic video of "9·3" and released the grand occasion of mooncakes. In cooperation with the United Nations, Caixin used VR shooting technology to produce the documentary Kindergarten in mountain Villages, which focuses on the learning and living conditions of poor children in mountain villages in Guizhou. It has aroused great social response.[] (The case in "A Brief Analysis of the Impact of The Application of Virtual Reality Technology on News Narrative Text" may be useful) In 2020, a sudden epidemic disrupted the rhythm of people's life, "inhouse" has become a common way of life. The VR base station built by CCTV Headquarters in conjunction with China Telecom and other institutions in Mt. Honolulu and Raytheon Hospital enables the audience to visit the construction site of the hospital like a field trip and feel immersed.

 

iii. Audience's independent choice of media content

 

McLuhan's media determinism points out that the media itself plays a dominant role in communication.Paul Levinson rejected this view. He pointed out that human beings play a decisive role in the fulfillment of the function of communication by media, and called this theory soft media determinism. Levinson believes that people are the masters of the media and have the ability to manipulate the media and choose the content they create independently. In media evolution theory, Levinson pointed out that as a social group with subjective initiative, human beings do not change their choice of media with the change of media technology. On the contrary, it is human beings who decide the choice of media. This theory is called by Levinson as the "humanization trend" theory.

According to the theory of "humanized trend", the impact of TV on newspapers and network media on TV makes the media providing multi-sensory output more humanized and more in line with the development trend of The Times.It can be seen that the prospect of VR news seems very promising.

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II. Limitations of VR news

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Since the emergence of VR technology, the news industry has been constantly trying to apply this new media technology in news reports, and some corresponding problems have emerged with VR technology in news applications.

 

i. Limitations of VR news in content selection

 

The dissemination of any news media is based on "content first", while VR news focuses on experience.The production of VR news needs to consume a large amount of material resources, which leads to poor timeliness. The immersive experience form transmits information through various senses of the human body, which makes the substantive content of the news unable to be effectively transmitted, resulting in the pan-entertainment of the news. In 2015, ABC launched the "NewsVR" project, which focuses on environmental experience in terms of content selection. It produced a VR news "InsideSyria" centering on the Endangered Cultural Relics Museum in Syria. The project producer restored the real scene and carried out news reports through VR technology. While most people experience the sights and customs of Damascus and visit Syria's endangered antiquities, some experiencers spend more time observing other things.

 

Of course, unlike video news, which is not editable, anything in VR news scenes can be edited. However, the problem brought by strong editability is poor authenticity, while reality is the life of news, which leads to the limitation of VR news content. Compared with the old media, the advantage of VR news lies in strengthening the process of news transmission, that is to say, VR technology creates more possibilities for the stage of "information reaching the audience", so the content of VR news is limited to the field of "communication".

 

ii. The existing VR technology cannot meet the timeliness of news

 

News is serious, and getting information about our survival and lives is the primary purpose of getting news. Timeliness, as another characteristic of news, is a constant factor that reflects the value of news. To put it simply, the shorter the time between the news report and the event, the more timely the news and the higher the news value.In order to pursue timeliness, traditional journalists have widely applied artificial intelligence in news reports. For example, after an event occurs, a writing robot can edit the event into news through a complex algorithm system and send it out through the platform within a few seconds.In contrast, VR news not only consumes a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources in the early stage of material collection, post-production and review, but also consumes a lot of time.

 

In terms of technology, VR news requires much higher standards of computer technology and personnel than traditional editors. According to the current development level of VR technology, VR news presents unsatisfactory effects due to hardware limitations, and there are only a few technicians who are proficient in VR news production. Earlier this year, people club department and the state administration of market regulation, the National Bureau of Statistics in order to cultivate professional personnel of VR technology, will be formally "virtual reality engineering technical personnel" listed as one of the 16 new career, after the Ministry of Education will also be "virtual reality technology undergraduate" into the catalogue of professional undergraduate course of common colleges and universities (2020 edition) ", to set up vocational education and professional training program, to determine the teaching and training provides the basis and the reference, so as to realize the talent training and market docking, meet the demand of 5G+VR industry development.

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iii. VR experience may reduce the effectiveness of news

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Although the technical problems will be solved in the near future, virtual reality will make people's lifestyle more gamified. Although Levinson's soft media evolution points out that the content of media communication will be regulated, VR news will reproduce to the audience the 360° scene of rich information that takes place in another space and time, which will greatly stimulate the audience's curiosity.VR news itself blurs the boundary between news and entertainment with its game-like presentation.

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From the perspective of effect theory, when performing its special "extension" task, the old living medium abandons other part of human senses and excavates the information transmission function of another part of human senses. If the medium is extended to only one of the senses, the stimulus tends to be more direct and intense. For news communication, it is easier to highlight the key information of news and it is relatively easy to accept it, although the communication content is limited due to the single form. In the VR world, our multiple senses receive a large amount of information at the same time, which makes it easy for the audience to fail to capture the key information. It may also cause the decline of memory and attention due to human physiological limitations, which weakens the visual impact and emotional impact of VR news. Therefore, if the guiding element is not added in the editing of VR news, it is likely to make the audience forget or deviate from the original purpose of watching the news, thus reducing the effectiveness of VR news. Gansu nate's the Des moines chronicle (Des MoinesRegister make changes of the Harvest, Harvest of Change) is the application of VR technology in the news broadcast in the best case, but the production time more than 3 months, made of caixin "rural kindergarten" is also used for more than a month, the news production speed, is deviated from the news on the timeliness requirements.

 

But with the development of VR technology, timeliness has two aspects breakthrough up to now, one is to live, one is a portable rapid synthesis.In order to ensure the timeliness of news, producers may adopt the "template" method to integrate fresh content into existing VR news templates. In November 2016, the BBC's first panoramic video covering the Paris terrorist attacks was released in one afternoon, which could not be done before.

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iv. Potential danger of empathy effect in VR news

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In November 2015, New York Times launched VR news "TheDisplaced" for users to experience the real life of children living in the slum, which has received positive response from the society. While Displaced established a position for the New York Times in the VR news field, some parents also reported that their children did not show the sympathy that the production team wanted when experiencing the virtual slum life, instead, they showed disgust for the poor children. It can be seen that the empathy effect of VR news is a double-edged sword.It is such a realistic world that the audience may lose the ability of independent judgment and thinking, distort their own views and attitudes towards facts, and even forget the original purpose of watching news.

 

With the increasing development of computer technology, visual effects are eroding people's cultural imagination, and at the same time making people's thinking rigid and perception passive. Douglas Kellner, an American theorist, once said: "In the pseudo-reality world, the masses are bathed in meaningless media information. This is an era of the masses. The masses seek spectacle rather than meaning.[] As for news, if accuracy is not guaranteed, then news loses its most important significance.

 

IV. Conclusion

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From newspapers to radio, television and new media, to the beginning of VR technology, the history of media technology is also the evolution of media "remediation". Nowadays, the media around the world are racing to study the technology of VR news reporting and constantly trying to explore the VR news mode suitable for the public.However, VR news still has some problems to be solved in its early stage of development. According to McLuhan medium is outspread, but in extension also means constantly "cut", today's technology has allowed us to create a completely virtual world and used in the news industry, but the future of VR news will become like Baudrillard (Jean Baudrillard) displayed on the quasi elephant and the simulation of the real world, will become Walter Lippmann (Walter Lippmann) in mimicry environment theory, points out a kind of via the vector control of the real, we don't know.