The Study of Interpersonal Communication Using Virtual Environments and Digital Animation: Approaches and Methodologies
Presentation at the 66th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), June 9-13 2016, Fukuoka, Japan, International Communication Association, (2016)Abstract
Virtual technologies inherit great potential as methodology to study interpersonal communication. Current Virtual Reality (VR) technology is becoming increasingly available and accessible for research fields not limited to computer science. This flashlight will explain technological approaches and their use for the study of communication phenomena, presenting perspectives and potentials for communication research. It emphasizes technological requirements and workflows to take advantage out of the many possibilities VR and Virtual Environments (VE) offer for objective measurements that can be applied to interpersonal communication research. The present paper therefore focuses on approaches to motion tracking, physical appearances of avatars as stimuli, and exemplary objective measurements. Results of own studies are presented in order to give examples for technological adoptions to answer related research questions.
