THE REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM
Olympic presenters: different countries, same studio
Tennis star Karolina Pliskova beams into Eurosport studio
All this will make sports (and news) coverage more engaging this year but potentially also confuse the boundaries between what is real and virtually created. Distribution opportunities for news: It’s still early days but if more time is spent in virtual worlds, at least some of it is bound to be spent with news. Almost 20 years ago the BBC developed a news screen for Second Life and it won’t be long before similar experiences become possible in a range of metaverses near you. Having said that, the challenges of content moderation and oversight that already plague social media could get even worse in spaces powered by VR and AR. An early metaverse demo, for example, was disrupted by a bot spewing misinformation about the dangers of vaccines. Experiences from other nascent virtual worlds also reveal extensive problems with racism, homophobia, and other forms of hate speech.37
BBC animated news screen Second Life – mid 2000s
BBC Backstage
5.3 Web3, Crypto, and NFTs As we’ve already discussed, the development of the metaverse is closely linked with virtual currencies and the idea that digital objects and experiences can be bought and sold in a safe and secure way. This shift is sometimes linked to the next stage of the development of the web which has seen control shift from (1) old gatekeepers to (2) tech platforms and intermediaries and now potentially to (3) individual users and creators themselves. The chart on the next page shows how analyst Benedict Evans describes the possibilities in his annual state of technology presentation.38
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-15/misinformation-has-already-made-its-way-to-facebook-s-metaverse https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations
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