The Center for Investigative Reporting, Google News Lab, Berlin-based VRagments, The Globe and Mail and The Working Group are launching a pop-up studio to develop virtual reality experiences at the intersection of high-impact journalism and immersive media. The idea emerged out of a collaboration between CIR and Google News Labs at a TechRaking event in Berlin in the spring.
The VR Pop-Up Studio begins July 28, 2015 and will include open houses in cities around the world this year. Open houses will be held in the San Francisco Bay Area, London, Paris, Toronto and Berlin, where an event focusing on virtual reality and innovation will be held Sept. 18.
Newsrooms across the U.S. already are looking at ways to integrate virtual reality into their projects, including the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts’ Project Syria, David Dufresne’s Fort McMoney and The Des Moines Register’s Harvest of Change. Designed to explore the emerging creative opportunities for virtual reality and how it will affect newsrooms, the VR Pop-Up Studio will continue to find new ways to engage audiences with this exciting technology.
CIR and VRagments also will begin collaborating on Fader, a dashboard developed for virtual reality that will empower journalists and the public to track Internet shaming and empathy. Fader will provide users with the ability to set filters for key search, social and community data related to journalism and public discourse. It will enable the mapping of digital diasporas that evolve from memes and identify key influencers and opportunities for sentiment and trend analysis.
Have an idea for collaborating to incorporate virtual reality into a project or interested in finding out more? Email us at vrpopup@cironline.org.