Structural characteristics of studies on Immersive Journalism 2010-2020

The article investigates and systematises the structural characteristics of published studies on Immersive Journalism (IJ) in the years 2010 to 2020, as well as locating the most cited references and new strands on the subject. The IJ concept was coined by De la Pena et al. (2010). Journalism carried out with technology and Virtual Reality (VR) seeks to restore the emotional involvement of the public in those events that facilitate greater empathy and understanding of a reported reality (Dominguez, 2015). IJ is an emerging research object, as is VR technology, and demands systematisations and bibliographic updates. The article uses the method of Social Network Analysis (SNA), using the Gephi software, to create semantic networks to identify and analyse the co-occurrence, centrality and communities formed from the keywords found in the catalogued searches containing the term "immersive journalism." The databases Web of Science, Scopus, Scielo, Portal de Periodicos and Portal de Teses e Dissertacoes da CAPES were consulted. Among the results, it was found that, in the last decade, Spanish institutions played a leading role in hosting research on IJ. In 2020, it is possible to notice a growth in theoretical discussions aligned to the use of technologies in journalism and a focus on reception studies.