This paper introduces the concept and discusses the implications of immersive journalism, which is the production of news in a form in which people can gain first-person experiences of the events or situation described in news stories. The fundamental idea of immersive journalism is to allow the participant, typically represented as a digital avatar, to actually enter a virtually recreated scenario representing the news story. The sense of presence obtained through an immersive system (whether a Cave or head-tracked head-mounted displays [HMD] and online virtual worlds, such as video games and online virtual worlds) affords the participant unprecedented access to the sights and sounds, and possibly feelings and emotions, that accompany the news. This paper surveys current approaches to immersive journalism and the theoretical background supporting claims regarding avatar experience in immersive systems. We also provide a specific demonstration: giving participants the experience of being in an interrogation room in an offshore prison. By both describing current approaches and demonstrating an immersive journalism experience, we open a new avenue for research into how presence can be utilized in the field of news and nonfiction.

Brain processing of spatial information is a very prolific area of research in neuroscience. Since the discovery of place cells (PCs)(O'Keefe & Dostrovsky, “The hippocampus as a spatial map,” Brain Research 34 , 1971) researchers have tried to explain how these neurons integrate and process spatial and non-spatial information. Place cells are pyramidal neurons located in the hippocampus and parahippocampal region which fire with higher frequency when the animal is in a discrete area of space. Recently, PCs have been found in the human brain. The processing of spatial information and the creation of cognitive maps of the space is the result of the integration of multisensory external and internal information with the brain's own activity. In this article we review some of the most relevant properties of PCs and how this knowledge can be extended to the understanding of human processing of spatial information and to the generation of spatial presence.

An important contributor to the feeling of being present is the unity of one's perceptual experience. That is, the constellation of sensorial cues in a virtual environment must be in accord with some basic rules which, in the real world, govern the relationship between sensory events. A similar and long standing problem in neuroscience is how is it that the temporally and spatially segregated activity in neuronal ensembles is reassembled in order to generate a seamless conscious experience. This issue, which was first addressed by the Gestalt psychologists, is commonly referred to as the binding problem. In this paper we will discuss how the problem of binding is related to the problem of presence, and how the study of the neurophysiological substrates subserving this process may lead to an understanding of contextual relationships critical to generating presence in virtual environments.