Placing the user within the story: 3 good approaches

One of the oldest and most important unwritten rule says that you shouldn’t rely on words to tell your story.

Jerry Jenkins defines telling as simply informing your reader of information, rather than allowing him to deduce anything (showing).

In an information-saturated age, facts and figures don’t stick in our minds and the audience demands stories (Morgan, 2014).

Immersive reality, or interactive visualisations, amongst other technologies, facilitate media and companies to go beyond telling or showing and are placing the audience within the story.

An easy topic to apply these techniques are natural disasters. Audiences can hardly place themselves into the affected area or respond quickly to these dangers, and smartphones can help in this learning.

Below three good approaches:

2016 represented in 12 vines

2016 has presented changes on politics, technology and successes: England vote the Brexit, Trump won the battle to Hillary; virtual reality depicted the Mobile World Congress, journalists got together to release the Panama Papers, and famous people such as David Bowie or Alan Rickman passed away.

Another app that said goodbye this year is Vine. This service was founded in 2012, offering a six second looping video that could be shared on Twitter and Facebook.

I’ve selected 12 incidents, one for each month of the year, with a video published on Vine to say bye to this year:

My first steps in telling stories through virtual reality tools

Virtual reality is no longer in hands of the gaming industry. Journalists are experimenting with 360-degree cameras, GoPro, Google Street View, Cardboard Camera and other apps to create immersive experiences.

But how is virtual reality shaping the news and readers? Does it need a rule book?Edward Helmore says in this article that immersive journalism, as journalism in general, can also be subjective and subject to manipulation.