Sonic stories, sensory ethnographies and immersive forensic storytelling in Travelling While Black

Abstract

This article explores the emerging domain of cinematic virtual reality (CVR) as a powerful medium for sonic stories, sensory ethnographies, and immersive forensic storytelling. Building on the assertion that interactive documentaries are a highly evolved immersive media, this study positions CVR works as uniquely capable of fostering narrative-based experiences through visualisations whose multimodality enables them to convey rhetoric through informative, narrative and visual strategies. Responding to the call of examining how digital media shape protest cultures, the article argues that CVR functions as a critical site for counter-representations and counter-narratives, and contends that the multimodal affordances of 360° environments serve as dynamic sites of struggle and political agency, enabling viewers to perceptually move into the protagonists’ body. Through a narrative-semiotic lens, employing Bamberg and Georgakopoulou’s narrative positioning analysis and Elyamany’s forensic gaze and Criminal Scene Investigation (CSI) shot taxonomies, this research work analyses how storytellers and viewers adopt varying viewing or identity positions in the CVR experience of Travelling While Black. The study contributes to understanding the unique multimodality of CVR in generating empathetic forensic storytelling and contributing to post-digital activism.