Here’s an excerpt from one of the earlier drafts of our white paper on the link between cinematic vr and empathy, published as a white paper by the Tow Institute. Read that paper here. The purpose of this post is to contextualize the study within the respective fields of VR and psychology, drawing on empathy research published in academic journals, … Read More
Mapping hysteria: the Ebola pan(dem)ic
Although a few cases of Ebola have been confirmed in the United States, a more aggressive pandemic is taking root: hypochondria. News stories are being published from all over the United States about people who either think they have the disease, or think someone else does, and then spring into action. The media then entered a frenzy of coverage, not … Read More
Testing the canfield green apartments virtual reality prototype
After two months of hard work, we have been able to test our first virtual reality prototype of Canfield Green Apartments, the site of the shooting of Michael Brown. Our prototype consisted of a desktop virtual reality model that “pinged” eyewitness re-creations to mobile devices as users accessed the various beacons within the model. During testing we asked our … Read More
Playing with fire(arms): Explaining police militarization using video games
In conjunction with the Ferguson project, Empathetic Media is also creating combing through hundreds of pages of hand-receipt records of surplus military equipment turned over to police departments to research a a news video game.