Metaverse and Extended Realities in Immersive Journalism: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Immersive journalism is a new form of media communication that uses extended reality systems to produce its content. Despite the possibilities it offers, its use is still limited in the media due to the lack of systematised and scientific knowledge regarding its application. This is a problem because it is a very powerful technology that changes the way audiences receive information and can be used both for new forms of storytelling that generate greater user engagement and for very sophisticated disinformation, which is why it is really important to study it. This study analyses articles published in the last 5 years that cover the use of extended technologies and the metaverse applied to immersive journalism. A systematic literature review applying PRISMA was carried out to identify literature within Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar (n = 61). Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted on the data collection techniques, the type of the data and the analysis techniques used. The results show a low level of methodological maturity, with research that is fundamentally descriptive and not very formalised, which limits the scope of its results and, therefore, the transfer of knowledge for its application in the configuration of new immersive journalistic products. The metaverse and extended technologies are considered independently and with distinct applications. It is concluded that research in this area is still in an initial exploratory and generalist stage that offers results that are not yet applicable to the promotion of this type of media format.