„Stop the war on women!”
People are yelling, the atmosphere is heated. It’s 2017 and you are in the middle of New York City (NYC), surrounded by protesters who are fed up. The reason? Donald Trump’s inauguration as president. This sparked the largest single day protest in American History, according to womensmarch.com. It started in Washington, and then
“Five million people marched across the globe, in every state, on every continent launching a movement.“[1]
Some topics are just perfect for immersive journalism. Protests are one of them. You have a 360° camera with you.
You already know where we’re going with this.
To help people who were not there that day understand what the importance of the Women’s March is all about, you create in immersive story. If you’d like to know what that could look like, check out this link: NYC Women’s March.[2]
Congratulations, you are now an immersive Citizen Journalist.
Since social media became big, it has become easier for people to share photos, videos and information from newsworthy places. This is especially handy for people in politically unstable climates, particularly where the media is controlled by the government. Suddenly, ordinary citizens are doing independent journalistic work for one another. Via the internet, anyone could become a reporter.
Now, with 360° video, people cannot just look at the events in a story, they can be in them. The tool MediaVerse uses to put together 360° immersive-stories is Fader by our partner Vragments. Fader makes it extremely easy: After you are done filming, you simply add your 360° videos and other components such as regular photos, background information and text to the story using templates.
The end-users will have an immersive experience and get an impression of what it is like to be on site, even though they are not really there. Via the MediaVerse platform, your 360° infotainment can even be picked up and distributed by major news outlets. You can learn more about what MediaVerse can do for Citizen Journalists here.
At DW (Deutsche Welle), we already love immersive Citizen Journalism. In workshops with editors and journalists, we found out that there is a great deal of interest in it.
„We can make people feel what being there is like“, said one journalist after we let them experiment with Fader.
It proved that the 360° authoring-tool can also be used to present or contrast different opinions, to explain facts in a playful way (see “Five most asked questions about the British Empire”) or even to create a quiz on certain newsworthy topics for end-users:
Five most asked Questions about the British Empire by DW Editor and Social Media Reporter Tina Blackwell
Wahl-O-Mat Story by DW Innovation Manager and Senior Editor Ksenia Skriptchenko
Quiz on Landmines in Ukraine by euronews
[1] Our History, Womensmarch.com. URL: https://www.womensmarch.com/about-us [Seen 07/11/2023].
[2] All Fader stories are best viewed in Google Chrome, other browsers such as Safari may distort the results. The sources appearing in this Fader story (NYC Women’s March) are listed below in more detail.
Cover photo of this article by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash.
Sources of immersive story “NYC Women’s March”
Explainer: How gender inequality and climate change are interconnected. UN WOMEN. URL: https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/explainer/2022/02/explainer-how-gender-inequality-and-climate-change-are-interconnected [seen 07/11/2023].
Harvey-Jenner, Catriona: 25 things Donald Trump has actually said about women. Cosmopolitan. URL: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a42442/donald-trump-women-sexist-quotes/ [seen 07/11/2023].
Korte, Gregory/ Gomez, Alan: Trump ramps up rhetoric on undocumented immigrants: ‘These aren’t people. These are animals.’ USA TODAY NEWS. URL: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/16/trump-immigrants-animals-mexico-democrats-sanctuary-cities/617252002/ [seen 07/11/2023].
Our History, Women’s March. URL: https://www.womensmarch.com/about-us [seen 07/11/2023].
Russell, Jenna/ Sasani, Ava: Women’s March Holds Nationwide Rallies on 50th Anniversary of Roe. The New York Times. URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/us/politics/womens-march-roe-wade.html [seen 07/11/2023].
The Women’s March, 2017. National Museum of American History. URL: https://americanhistory.si.edu/creating-icons/women’s-march-2017 [seen 07/11/2023].
11 Facts about Women Around the World. Dosomething.org. URL: https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-women-around-world [seen 07/11/2023].