After spending time reading articles on news criticality and truthfulness, I came across an article written by Nonny de la Peña on Immersive Journalism. So what is Immersive Journalism? Immersive Journalism in this context is the use of digitized tools, such as Virtual Reality (VR) to mediate news content and information. To further elaborate on an example that uses VR, an individual is given a headset to wear and experiences a virtual event that has been generated through a computer mimicking a real-life event but using digitality to represent the information of an actual event that has occurred, such as a person having a seizure. You are able to witness the person having the seizure but only in the virtual realm. This has evoked a lot of reactions to how one experiences an event, meaning that the medium of information becomes a foundational pillar to the experience itself. As Marshall McLuhan would say, “the medium is the message”. My question is the following, through using Virtual Reality, are we able to reach a new level of compassion when consuming news and information? will immersive journalism become the better alternative medium of news circulation?

After reading New Zealand Censors Declare Christchurch Shooting Footage Illegal; Start Rounding Up Violators by Tim Cushing, I wanted to tie it to my previous journal on news distribution, legality, and ignorance. In my previous entry I focused on exploring the aspect of exercising critical faculties when reading news, following the recent mass shooting that occurred in New Zealand, I want to touch on the notion of exercising such criticality when distributing and re-sharing footage of violence and murder. We have arrived at a stage in digital media where the exposure to such violence has been somehow normalized, individuals are immunized from questioning the ethicality of sharing the tragedies of others, circulating the suffering and deaths of others without questioning the meaning of such act. This makes me wonder about how the digital media age has become a tool or a vessel of desensitizing grief. Individuals no longer feel the need to respect notions of privacy when it comes to the suffering of others that clicking the share button has become a simple swift movement on the fingers.