27/05/21: Seminari CORE "The frontiers of knowledge in Communication Studies"
27/05/21: Seminari CORE "The frontiers of knowledge in Communication Studies"
UPFCORE
In this CORE session we will discuss how immersive media including virtual reality, augmented reality and other emerging technologies are studied from the Communication and Media Psychology perspectives.
With:
Jakki Bailey (University of Texas) - How the avatar moves the user: Self-avatar embodiment and user behavior in immersive virtual reality. Children develop social connections with media figures, affecting their actions and perceptions. Virtual reality (VR) has unique technological affordances that creates the illusion of sharing the same space with virtual characters. This presentation provides an overview of research with children and immersive virtual reality (VR), and how the perceptual and social realism of VR relates to child development. She will discuss findings from her current work examining young children’s use of VR and interaction with virtual characters, and areas for future research.
Andrea Stevenson Won (Cornell University) - How the avatar moves the user: Self-avatar embodiment and user behavior in immersive virtual reality. In this presentation, Stevenson Won will briefly discuss how avatar embodiment can be considered as consistent or discrepant with user’s physical bodies. She'll then describe two recent studies from her lab that modified how participants’ actions did or did not control their avatars’ movements, and the effects on participant behavior. Finally, she'll suggest potential applications for these kinds of novel embodiment experiences.
Tanja Aitamurto (University of Illinois) - Examining augmented reality in journalism: Presence, knowledge gain, and perceived visual authenticity. The fundamental goal of journalism is to engage and inform people. Augmented reality (AR) can contribute to both of these goals by providing scaffolded information in an immersive, engaging viewing experience. In this talk, Aitamurto will discuss the impact of AR visualizations on users’ sense of physical presence, knowledge gain, and perceptions of the authenticity of journalistic visuals based on a recent study. The findings indicate a need for more efficient ways to relay information through journalistic AR visualizations while keeping the user engaged in an immersive experience.
Tanja Aitamurto is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She completed her PhD program at Tampere University, of which she studied most of the time as a visiting student researcher at Stanford and at UC Berkeley.
Jakki Bailey is the current Scott C. and Vickie S. Reeve Endowed Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. She completed her PhD in the Virtual Human Interaction Lab in the Department of Communication at Stanford University.
Andrea Stevenson Won is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University and the director of the Virtual Embodiment Lab. She completed her PhD in the Virtual Human Interaction Lab in the Department of Communication at Stanford University.