Immersion in VR News Pieces Focusing on Cognitive Factors Based on Grounded Theory

Considering that the users are the main focus of immersive journalism, any study in this field without understanding and recognizing them is incomplete. The quality of the VR news experience depends on many parameters, the most important of which are related to the cognitive and behavioral science of the users, apart from the technological factors that are prerequisites for making VR. In this regard, through interviews with experts in journalism and cognitive sciences, this research identified the categories that influence the depth of user’s immersion based on the Grounded Theory methodology and finally presented a conceptual model. The phenomenon of the model is “user involvement”. This category is affected by contextual factors such as "user’s demographic characteristics" and "type of news", as well as the intervening factors of "trauma" and "preventing factors of using virtual reality". In addition, the three categories of "cognition", "narrative" and "crafting pieces" provided the causal conditions that are the basis for the immersion in the news narrative. Finally, "focusing on user’s cognitive factors" in creating VR pieces is the interaction strategy that brought two consequences of "increasing immersion" and "changing norms and behaviors".