The professor, who co-hosted a talk on journalism and VR at the convention, is also currently studying whether the medium creates a greater sense of empathy from news consumers than print or two-dimensional video.
“There’s a huge amount of hype over this stuff,” Owen said.
“Some of the hype is grounded in this idea of empathy.
Somehow, because you experience looking at a world through the perspective of someone else, you’ll empathize with their situation better. And that may be the case, but we don’t know yet.”