News/Research

Rue and Koci Hernandez on AR in the California Magazine

02 Mar, 2018

Rue and Koci Hernandez on AR in the California Magazine

New media and journalism professors Rue and Koci-Hernandez were featured in "Is Augmented Reality the News Media's New Frontier?" in California Magazine. The article considered the cost and potential use of AR technology in the future of journalism. Rue and Koci-Hernandex commented on journalism's potential for taking on new ways to share information.

From the article:

"'This has been my biggest frustration with the [news industry] in general—is that it sees its mission as purely and solely journalistic storytelling,' says Richard Koci-Hernandez, journalism and multimedia professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He suggests that news media should start seeing themselves less as pure storytelling publications and more as communications companies that create applications with utility. Because usefulness is a huge factor in determining whether or not a new application succeeds.

"Koci-Hernandez says that for AR to have a place in journalism, '[news organizations] would have to find a way to make the AR experience ridiculously useful, just like the newspaper was actually ridiculously useful before the Internet. It was the only place to get movies times, get your coupons, to read news and other kinds of things. There was a utility to [newspapers].'

"'Visual media help people to get a better spatial understanding of how the event unfolded, like the Las Vegas [mass shooting]. How high up was this person? Why was this shooting so effective? How did it work? How did a [bump stock gun accessory] enhance the gun’s ability to fire rapidly?' says Jeremy Rue, assistant dean for academics, and new media lecturer at Berkeley’s J-School. He thinks AR could be a tool for communicating that kind of information."

Read the rest of the article here.