The study examines the use of immersive journalism, journalistic storytelling using Virtual Reality, as a tool to promote knowledge, empathy, and change in views and opinions on the phenomenon of sexual harassment among men and women. Testimonies of employees reporting workplace harassment were adapted into a screenplay. The screenplay presented ongoing verbal sexual harassment of an employee by her manager, filmed from the victim’s point of view by the use of a 360-degree camera. In a controlled experiment, change in attitudes on sexual harassment and empathy toward the victim were compared between participants consuming the content as either a written script, 2-dimensional screened video or 360-degree, 3-dimensional immersive virtual reality experience. The results point to an interaction effect, where a decrease in stereotypical views of sexual harassment was predicted by gender (men), method of consumption (immersive), and assessment of the effectiveness and emotionality of the content. Implications and directions for future research and practice are discussed.

This research aims to contribute to the theory and practice of e-participation, looking specifically at ways to enhance the deliberative quality of political discussions in online forums. Building on theories of information processing and social norms, we suggest that particular visual banners may be integrated in an online forum, and serve as cues that prime participants to think about the context as a place of public deliberation. In turn, we hypothesize that these cues would promote the deliberative quality of the discussion. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a controlled experiment where cues were integrated as visuals banners alongside the content of an online discussion forum. Content analysis of forum comments (N = 476) included measures for reasoned opinion expression as well as indicators of listening and respecting others’ opinions. Findings support the study's hypotheses that deliberative cues matter for online deliberation. We discuss the findings and outline directions for future research.