good morning my name is Bianca right and
I’m a journalist and academic and
perhaps most importantly for this TEDx
talk a gamer and I want to tell you why
I think we need to play the news in
virtual reality I became a journalist
some twenty or so years ago because I
believed in the power of journalism to
enact change and I wanted to be part of
that change I learned that even the
smallest story can have a huge impact if
it reaches the right people in fact the
story that I’m perhaps proudest of was a
small article in a community newspaper
in South Africa it was about the opening
of a rehabilitation center for
quadriplegic and a paraplegic people and
if I’m honest it was published in a
newspaper that nobody reads the kind
that has more advertising than editorial
but somebody did read it a relative of a
paraplegic person in a nearby township
and she reached out to the
rehabilitation center and her life
changed the Rehabilitation Center was
able to offer her a rehabilitation to
allow her to regain the use of her arms
and to feed herself for the first time
in 12 years she regained her mobility
through the use of an electric
wheelchair meeting her was perhaps the
most powerful lesson I’ve learned about
the power of media today though fake
news and an increasing reliance on
social media has meant that there’s been
falling trust in what journalism is and
can and should be at its core it needs a
reboot in order to refocus itself on
what those core principles really are
about if ever there was a time to reboot
journalism it’s now percentage trust in
the media has been falling trusts in the
UK media for example fell seven points
last year according to the Reuters
digital news report and around the world
percentage trust varies widely falling
as low as 23 percent in places like
South Korea and rising to over 60% in
places like Finland apart from the times
the news the metro and the London
Evening Standard all national daily
and Sunday titles recorded year-on-year
decline in 2017 according to the press
Cosette even with digital growth
monetization remains elusive
and threatens the future of news
globally I was drawn to journalism
because of the powered has to change not
only individual lives but societal views
the fundamental principles of journalism
are about its role as watchdog of
society inextricably linked to notions
of democracy yet news organizations are
struggling to compete for attention and
as audiences continue to fragment the
role of journalism is being diluted
substituted for a growing emphasis on
entertainment over information and
analysis audiences are attracted by
clickbait fueled headlines that often
obscure the value of journalism yet we
need good journalism now more than ever
the major problems of the world scarcity
of resources climate change
discrimination poverty need to be
tackled by society as a whole and in
order to do that people need to
understand those issues they need to be
exposed to the realities of things that
are often far removed from their own
lived experiences that’s something that
journalism is always strive to do and
that’s one of the reasons I believe we
need to play the news I’m sure you’ll
say to me hmm
you’ve just said we’re replacing
information and analysis with
entertainment and now you’re saying we
should play the news isn’t that the same
thing plague can be a very difficult
world word when applied to serious
issues people tend to equate play with
the trivial so let me explain to you
what I mean when I talk about playing
the news playing this sense refers to
the ability of the user to do something
within the environment to make choices
and to have those choices reflected in
the outcome of the story so let me ask
you are there any gamers in the house
anybody who plays games regularly
whether on mobile phones tablets
consoles anybody a few some very shy
hands coming up good that’s great so
when you play games a number of things
happen for those of you who don’t play
digital games maybe you can imagine or
remember what it was like when you were
little and used to play make-believe or
dress-up you’d enter another world the
world of your imagination and that’s one
of the things that games can do
in transport you to other worlds so as a
gamer I’ve traveled not just around the
world but across the universe and I’ve
encountered people and beings that are
as far a move for me as can be imagined
think then about the possibilities of
using those platforms to connect
communities that are disconnected to be
used within the context of journalism to
tell those kinds of stories Gaming
doesn’t only bring together people it
also teaches certain things so as a
gamer I’ve learned problem-solving
resilience perseverance teamwork
in fact Studies on the ability of games
to teach resilience on numerous Robin
romex 2004 study titled game time games
to promote social and emotional
resilience for children aged 4 to 14 for
example promoted a number of therapeutic
games to do just that Jennifer Titian
and Timothy Marvin’s 2017 study on the
PlayStation Network community found that
gamers were able to transfer a lot of
the positive psychological effects of
playing games into their real-world
experiences and my own 2013 result
research on gamer identity found that
many gamers reported strong feelings
that resilience and confidence and
perseverance were improved as a result
of playing games gamers don’t give up in
the face of adversity when you fail and
quite often in gaming you fail
spectacularly you try again and again
and again until you overcome that
obstacle imagine if we use that approach
in the real world billions of people
collectively playing the news with a
view to changing it bettering the world
finding solutions in fact that’s what a
game designer Jane McGonigal proposed in
her 2010 TED talk the difference is that
while there’s a recognition that games
can play an important role in engaging
with these issues
no one has quite found a way to balance
the Wonder the excitement dare I say it
the entertainment of games with the real
world problem solving that we need in
order to engage with these issues play
can be
it can be more than just fun it is
meaningful as a lecturer as an academic
as a teacher I use play to teach to help
my students learn and quite often it’s
one of the most effective ways to do
that serious games then is that strand
of game development that seeks to
conscient eyes people to real world
issues and it’s already had applications
in journalism here for example is al
Jazeera’s mobile games I hacked a
playable version of the cyber terrorism
experienced during the Syrian civil war
by giving users choice the news game
offered them unique insight into an
issue that was complex and far removed
from everybody’s everyday lives but
successful examples like sy Hecht are
the exception rather than the rule and
one of the biggest challenges as I said
is balancing that gameplay with that
information analysis getting that
balance just right takes time so how do
we take this a step further in most of
technologies like virtual reality give
audiences agency choice and power in
issues that they would otherwise be far
removed from virtual reality has been
called the ultimate empathy machine if
you’ve watched any kind of talk on on
virtual reality you’ve probably heard
that phrase before
I’m not wholly convinced that that’s the
case and I think many of you probably
aren’t either but what I have learnt is
that VR does something that other
mediums struggle to do it connects with
people in ways we don’t fully understand
VR games have the potential to move even
closer to real immersion taking people
seemingly bodily into a virtual space
and allowing them to grapple with
simulated situations and we’ve already
seen their application within journalism
so the Guardian for example has a number
of VR experiences some of them you may
have tried this is limbo this is their
experience themed around asylum seekers
and it allows you to hear their stories
as with many of these VR experiences and
there are ones on autism on first year
of life variety of different themes you
are a passive viewer and that’s what I
think we need to change we need to move
from being a passive viewer to being an
agent
of change now many of you will have
concerns about trusting on already and
trustworthy news media with storytelling
in a medium that is so right for
exploitation and to be honest I agree
with you
building trust will take time it will
require regulatory bodies news
organizations and the public to work
together to build something that can
truly take advantage of what these
technologies offer it will require
grappling with issues of data privacy
ethics and law and most importantly it
will require opening ourselves up to new
ways of accessing stories about the
world around us some of you may say well
isn’t this just a fad or a hype the next
big thing that’s going to be here today
and gone tomorrow the same could be said
for the mobile phone just 10 or 15 years
ago or the PC before that or television
before that while these technologies
will evolve and the way that we interact
with them will change immersive
storytelling is unlikely to disappear as
the technologies mature admit immersive
storytelling is not a panacea but I do
believe that if we embed this into the
broader media ecosystem we will be able
to harness the power of collective
problem solving to bring our audiences
closer to the issues facing the world so
let me give you an example from my own
experience this is Coventry blitz VR
it’s a Google digital news initiative
funded project that looks at
gamification virtual reality and 360
degree video we partnered with the
Coventry Telegraph was our media partner
to tell a story in virtual reality and
there are two components so there’s a
story mode which takes you into a
shelter where you hear jeans story and
there’s a game mode where you’re taken
into a Cathedral and you play the role
of a firefighter trying to save the
cathedral on the night of the 14th of
November 1940 why did we choose the
Coventry blitz well there are a number
of reasons firstly because the Coventry
Telegraph has a history of precedent of
innovating in its coverage of the Blitz
you may remember a few years ago them
live tweeting as though it were
happening on the particular day and also
how they’ve merged together photography
from the past and the
as in the image behind me in addition of
course there were technical and
logistical issues so for example we had
an existing model of the Cathedral which
made it easier to build within time and
budget and we had access to the Coventry
Telegraph’s archive of photographs and
news articles but perhaps most
importantly the Coventry blitz is
something that resonates with people and
with communities and perhaps we weren’t
quite aware of just how much it did did
so until we launched this particular
project so we took this to a number of
public events and we also brought it in
to schools in and around Coventry and
what we found was it was an amazing
connection with people most
significantly that it wasn’t about young
people engaging with the technology
although our school visits were amazing
but everybody came down to the public
events and in fact we had people in
their 90’s who tried virtual reality for
the first time with our Coventry blitz
experience although of course the
response was mixed this is the new
technology we don’t claim that the
experience is perfect and everybody
reacts to an immersive experience
differently on the whole the response
has been amazingly positive and most
people have indicated that they would
seek out similar news games or immersive
technology experiences in the future
most significantly though for us beyond
the survey data was the stories that
emerged as a result of this particular
experience so in the schools for example
students were asked to respond to what
they had experienced in the immersive
storytelling and many of them wrote
poems and short stories and the
engagement between the students and the
teachers and us as the project team was
really amazing to see there’s a lot of
excitement wasn’t very popular with
parents though because VR headsets went
on to Christmas and birthday lists after
we visited those schools so that wasn’t
very popular but on the whole the kind
of engagement that we had was really
heartening to see and similarly at the
public events people stayed behind they
didn’t just do the experience and move
off they wanted
tell us about their memories and this
was particularly significant for those
who had lived through or who had family
members who had lived through the Blitz
so we had an 89 year old man who told us
his story about losing his father during
the Blitz we had a woman who recalled
remembering the sounds of that night and
and a lot of other similar stories which
were perhaps most significant for what
we’re doing so we’re not there yet
I recognize that certainly playing the
news we are Coventry blitz is small in
scale and narrow in focus and the topic
resonates with the community in a way
that another might not this is not
necessarily something for everybody but
it has taught us a number of really
important lessons firstly it’s taught us
that there is still an appetite for news
even if that doesn’t translate into
traditional news consumption it’s taught
us that people from the ages of 10 to
over 90 are willing to experiment with
virtual reality and give it a go it’s
taught us that these immersive
experiences elicits interesting and
surprising responses and most
importantly it’s taught us that we still
need to look more deeply into what these
technologies can actually offer us so I
think perhaps for me the most important
lesson that we’ve learned is that
technology is not enough the focus is
not on the technology but on the story
we need good stories to make that
connection we need journalists and users
to work together to create news
experiences that take us back to the
core role of what journalism should be
the technology will change and will
change the way that we engage with it
but if we can put the emphasis on story
we can ensure that users continue to
connect with that good content in
immersive media imagine the
possibilities of putting users in
someone else’s shoes allowing them to
seize things from someone else’s
perspectives and then most importantly
giving them choices that allow them to
shape the outcome of the story imagine
how we can report issues of
discrimination poverty climate change
scarcity of resources and conflict using
these technologies my challenge to you
today then is this
consider the possibilities offer up some
of the possible negatives critique but
most importantly experiment try new ways
of accessing the news play with the
immersive experiences and feedback to
the media community so that we can start
to explore the real potential of what
these mediums have to offer maybe if we
play the news in virtual reality we’ll
start to have the motivation to enact
the real change we need in society today
thank you
[Applause] [Music]
I’m a journalist and academic and
perhaps most importantly for this TEDx
talk a gamer and I want to tell you why
I think we need to play the news in
virtual reality I became a journalist
some twenty or so years ago because I
believed in the power of journalism to
enact change and I wanted to be part of
that change I learned that even the
smallest story can have a huge impact if
it reaches the right people in fact the
story that I’m perhaps proudest of was a
small article in a community newspaper
in South Africa it was about the opening
of a rehabilitation center for
quadriplegic and a paraplegic people and
if I’m honest it was published in a
newspaper that nobody reads the kind
that has more advertising than editorial
but somebody did read it a relative of a
paraplegic person in a nearby township
and she reached out to the
rehabilitation center and her life
changed the Rehabilitation Center was
able to offer her a rehabilitation to
allow her to regain the use of her arms
and to feed herself for the first time
in 12 years she regained her mobility
through the use of an electric
wheelchair meeting her was perhaps the
most powerful lesson I’ve learned about
the power of media today though fake
news and an increasing reliance on
social media has meant that there’s been
falling trust in what journalism is and
can and should be at its core it needs a
reboot in order to refocus itself on
what those core principles really are
about if ever there was a time to reboot
journalism it’s now percentage trust in
the media has been falling trusts in the
UK media for example fell seven points
last year according to the Reuters
digital news report and around the world
percentage trust varies widely falling
as low as 23 percent in places like
South Korea and rising to over 60% in
places like Finland apart from the times
the news the metro and the London
Evening Standard all national daily
and Sunday titles recorded year-on-year
decline in 2017 according to the press
Cosette even with digital growth
monetization remains elusive
and threatens the future of news
globally I was drawn to journalism
because of the powered has to change not
only individual lives but societal views
the fundamental principles of journalism
are about its role as watchdog of
society inextricably linked to notions
of democracy yet news organizations are
struggling to compete for attention and
as audiences continue to fragment the
role of journalism is being diluted
substituted for a growing emphasis on
entertainment over information and
analysis audiences are attracted by
clickbait fueled headlines that often
obscure the value of journalism yet we
need good journalism now more than ever
the major problems of the world scarcity
of resources climate change
discrimination poverty need to be
tackled by society as a whole and in
order to do that people need to
understand those issues they need to be
exposed to the realities of things that
are often far removed from their own
lived experiences that’s something that
journalism is always strive to do and
that’s one of the reasons I believe we
need to play the news I’m sure you’ll
say to me hmm
you’ve just said we’re replacing
information and analysis with
entertainment and now you’re saying we
should play the news isn’t that the same
thing plague can be a very difficult
world word when applied to serious
issues people tend to equate play with
the trivial so let me explain to you
what I mean when I talk about playing
the news playing this sense refers to
the ability of the user to do something
within the environment to make choices
and to have those choices reflected in
the outcome of the story so let me ask
you are there any gamers in the house
anybody who plays games regularly
whether on mobile phones tablets
consoles anybody a few some very shy
hands coming up good that’s great so
when you play games a number of things
happen for those of you who don’t play
digital games maybe you can imagine or
remember what it was like when you were
little and used to play make-believe or
dress-up you’d enter another world the
world of your imagination and that’s one
of the things that games can do
in transport you to other worlds so as a
gamer I’ve traveled not just around the
world but across the universe and I’ve
encountered people and beings that are
as far a move for me as can be imagined
think then about the possibilities of
using those platforms to connect
communities that are disconnected to be
used within the context of journalism to
tell those kinds of stories Gaming
doesn’t only bring together people it
also teaches certain things so as a
gamer I’ve learned problem-solving
resilience perseverance teamwork
in fact Studies on the ability of games
to teach resilience on numerous Robin
romex 2004 study titled game time games
to promote social and emotional
resilience for children aged 4 to 14 for
example promoted a number of therapeutic
games to do just that Jennifer Titian
and Timothy Marvin’s 2017 study on the
PlayStation Network community found that
gamers were able to transfer a lot of
the positive psychological effects of
playing games into their real-world
experiences and my own 2013 result
research on gamer identity found that
many gamers reported strong feelings
that resilience and confidence and
perseverance were improved as a result
of playing games gamers don’t give up in
the face of adversity when you fail and
quite often in gaming you fail
spectacularly you try again and again
and again until you overcome that
obstacle imagine if we use that approach
in the real world billions of people
collectively playing the news with a
view to changing it bettering the world
finding solutions in fact that’s what a
game designer Jane McGonigal proposed in
her 2010 TED talk the difference is that
while there’s a recognition that games
can play an important role in engaging
with these issues
no one has quite found a way to balance
the Wonder the excitement dare I say it
the entertainment of games with the real
world problem solving that we need in
order to engage with these issues play
can be
it can be more than just fun it is
meaningful as a lecturer as an academic
as a teacher I use play to teach to help
my students learn and quite often it’s
one of the most effective ways to do
that serious games then is that strand
of game development that seeks to
conscient eyes people to real world
issues and it’s already had applications
in journalism here for example is al
Jazeera’s mobile games I hacked a
playable version of the cyber terrorism
experienced during the Syrian civil war
by giving users choice the news game
offered them unique insight into an
issue that was complex and far removed
from everybody’s everyday lives but
successful examples like sy Hecht are
the exception rather than the rule and
one of the biggest challenges as I said
is balancing that gameplay with that
information analysis getting that
balance just right takes time so how do
we take this a step further in most of
technologies like virtual reality give
audiences agency choice and power in
issues that they would otherwise be far
removed from virtual reality has been
called the ultimate empathy machine if
you’ve watched any kind of talk on on
virtual reality you’ve probably heard
that phrase before
I’m not wholly convinced that that’s the
case and I think many of you probably
aren’t either but what I have learnt is
that VR does something that other
mediums struggle to do it connects with
people in ways we don’t fully understand
VR games have the potential to move even
closer to real immersion taking people
seemingly bodily into a virtual space
and allowing them to grapple with
simulated situations and we’ve already
seen their application within journalism
so the Guardian for example has a number
of VR experiences some of them you may
have tried this is limbo this is their
experience themed around asylum seekers
and it allows you to hear their stories
as with many of these VR experiences and
there are ones on autism on first year
of life variety of different themes you
are a passive viewer and that’s what I
think we need to change we need to move
from being a passive viewer to being an
agent
of change now many of you will have
concerns about trusting on already and
trustworthy news media with storytelling
in a medium that is so right for
exploitation and to be honest I agree
with you
building trust will take time it will
require regulatory bodies news
organizations and the public to work
together to build something that can
truly take advantage of what these
technologies offer it will require
grappling with issues of data privacy
ethics and law and most importantly it
will require opening ourselves up to new
ways of accessing stories about the
world around us some of you may say well
isn’t this just a fad or a hype the next
big thing that’s going to be here today
and gone tomorrow the same could be said
for the mobile phone just 10 or 15 years
ago or the PC before that or television
before that while these technologies
will evolve and the way that we interact
with them will change immersive
storytelling is unlikely to disappear as
the technologies mature admit immersive
storytelling is not a panacea but I do
believe that if we embed this into the
broader media ecosystem we will be able
to harness the power of collective
problem solving to bring our audiences
closer to the issues facing the world so
let me give you an example from my own
experience this is Coventry blitz VR
it’s a Google digital news initiative
funded project that looks at
gamification virtual reality and 360
degree video we partnered with the
Coventry Telegraph was our media partner
to tell a story in virtual reality and
there are two components so there’s a
story mode which takes you into a
shelter where you hear jeans story and
there’s a game mode where you’re taken
into a Cathedral and you play the role
of a firefighter trying to save the
cathedral on the night of the 14th of
November 1940 why did we choose the
Coventry blitz well there are a number
of reasons firstly because the Coventry
Telegraph has a history of precedent of
innovating in its coverage of the Blitz
you may remember a few years ago them
live tweeting as though it were
happening on the particular day and also
how they’ve merged together photography
from the past and the
as in the image behind me in addition of
course there were technical and
logistical issues so for example we had
an existing model of the Cathedral which
made it easier to build within time and
budget and we had access to the Coventry
Telegraph’s archive of photographs and
news articles but perhaps most
importantly the Coventry blitz is
something that resonates with people and
with communities and perhaps we weren’t
quite aware of just how much it did did
so until we launched this particular
project so we took this to a number of
public events and we also brought it in
to schools in and around Coventry and
what we found was it was an amazing
connection with people most
significantly that it wasn’t about young
people engaging with the technology
although our school visits were amazing
but everybody came down to the public
events and in fact we had people in
their 90’s who tried virtual reality for
the first time with our Coventry blitz
experience although of course the
response was mixed this is the new
technology we don’t claim that the
experience is perfect and everybody
reacts to an immersive experience
differently on the whole the response
has been amazingly positive and most
people have indicated that they would
seek out similar news games or immersive
technology experiences in the future
most significantly though for us beyond
the survey data was the stories that
emerged as a result of this particular
experience so in the schools for example
students were asked to respond to what
they had experienced in the immersive
storytelling and many of them wrote
poems and short stories and the
engagement between the students and the
teachers and us as the project team was
really amazing to see there’s a lot of
excitement wasn’t very popular with
parents though because VR headsets went
on to Christmas and birthday lists after
we visited those schools so that wasn’t
very popular but on the whole the kind
of engagement that we had was really
heartening to see and similarly at the
public events people stayed behind they
didn’t just do the experience and move
off they wanted
tell us about their memories and this
was particularly significant for those
who had lived through or who had family
members who had lived through the Blitz
so we had an 89 year old man who told us
his story about losing his father during
the Blitz we had a woman who recalled
remembering the sounds of that night and
and a lot of other similar stories which
were perhaps most significant for what
we’re doing so we’re not there yet
I recognize that certainly playing the
news we are Coventry blitz is small in
scale and narrow in focus and the topic
resonates with the community in a way
that another might not this is not
necessarily something for everybody but
it has taught us a number of really
important lessons firstly it’s taught us
that there is still an appetite for news
even if that doesn’t translate into
traditional news consumption it’s taught
us that people from the ages of 10 to
over 90 are willing to experiment with
virtual reality and give it a go it’s
taught us that these immersive
experiences elicits interesting and
surprising responses and most
importantly it’s taught us that we still
need to look more deeply into what these
technologies can actually offer us so I
think perhaps for me the most important
lesson that we’ve learned is that
technology is not enough the focus is
not on the technology but on the story
we need good stories to make that
connection we need journalists and users
to work together to create news
experiences that take us back to the
core role of what journalism should be
the technology will change and will
change the way that we engage with it
but if we can put the emphasis on story
we can ensure that users continue to
connect with that good content in
immersive media imagine the
possibilities of putting users in
someone else’s shoes allowing them to
seize things from someone else’s
perspectives and then most importantly
giving them choices that allow them to
shape the outcome of the story imagine
how we can report issues of
discrimination poverty climate change
scarcity of resources and conflict using
these technologies my challenge to you
today then is this
consider the possibilities offer up some
of the possible negatives critique but
most importantly experiment try new ways
of accessing the news play with the
immersive experiences and feedback to
the media community so that we can start
to explore the real potential of what
these mediums have to offer maybe if we
play the news in virtual reality we’ll
start to have the motivation to enact
the real change we need in society today
thank you
[Applause] [Music]
Please follow and like us: