A experiência do usuário com conteúdos de jornalismo audiovisual em 360° e a centralidade da sensação de presença

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation focus on the user experience with 360o audiovisual journalism content, as well as some developments, considering the sense of presence as the central element. The specific objectives encompass three important elements for journalism – understanding, credibility and ethics – investigated from the users' sensations and perceptions. This research comes at a time when the experience has been gaining prominence in the journalistic universe, based on the use of emerging technology resources. One of them is virtual reality (VR), which we understand as a media that aims to provide experiences mediated by sensory stimulation devices that favor immersion and interaction, seeking to promote a sense of presence in virtual environments from which the user has a vision in 360°. Betting on the potential of VR, with the predominant use of 360° videos, but not only, journalistic organizations around the world invested in productions, mainly between 2014 and 2018, when productions began to slow down. However, multinationals in the technological market continue to invest in developing and popularizing VR, including the construction of virtual universes called metaverses. In this context, little knowledge has been built about journalistic narratives for virtual reality, investigating aspects of greater interest to journalism itself from the sensations and perceptions of users. Therefore, the thesis we defend is that the user experience with 360o audiovisual journalism content has as its central element the sense of presence, responsible for influencing, for example, understanding, credibility and ethics, among other important aspects for the journalism. From the perspective of a descriptive research, we methodologically built a reception study involving bibliographic and documentary research, mapping, experimental research with users (N=80), data collection through interviews and questionnaires, product analysis, statistical analysis and qualitative analysis of interviews. Among the main results, we highlight that this study pointed out that: a) the user experience begins with the individual's intention to experience it, an important step for immersion, which involves attention, focus and concentration; b) the sense of presence develops after immersion, evidenced mainly by three aspects: feeling of “being there”, realism and proximity. It is through them that the sense of presence plays a central role in the experience; c) the sense of presence also has a strong relationship with the user's cognitive overload, a factor that also acts in various directions of influence within the experience; d) understanding, credibility and perceived ethical aspects, as developments of the experience, are influenced by the sense of presence; e) during the experience, most users tend to explore the images more, paying less attention to the audio, but many feel confused or lost. Finally, this thesis also brings important theoretical-conceptual and methodological contributions.