Euronews and Vragments launch exclusive VR experience on French presidential election

[encyclomedia]

Euronews and Vragments launch exclusive
VR experience on French presidential election

To conclude its successful immersive coverage of the French presidential election, Euronews is launching an exclusive VR experience in partnership with German startup Vragments GmbH and Deutsche Welle.

Lyon, France - 17 May 2017 - After covering the French presidential campaign with an innovative series of portraits of voters, Euronews' VR experience takes you back into their home, to hear their reactions to the election's result. Placed in a virtual environment, the audience will hear again from the nine people Euronews followed during the campaign: What do they think about the new president, Emmanuel Macron. What are their hopes for the next five years?

http://www.euronews.com/2017/05/17/360- ... -elections

The experience will also allow users to dive back into the initial immersive portraits, representing a diversity of views and places at a crucial time for the country. These portraits were produced during the French presidential campaign, in collaboration with French regional media outlets.

To create this immersive, interactive experience, Euronews has used the VR storytelling platform Fader, developed by German startup Vragments. This team of technologists and journalists is dedicated to bringing new ways of storytelling to newsrooms and content producers by providing an easy-to-use VR tool called Fader. The French election VR experience provides an ideal project for Euronews and Vragments to explore the potential of the new platform. The innovation team of Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcaster, provided support as a consulting and dissemination partner.

Immersive journalism provided a fresh perspective on the campaign to better listen to and understand the issues affecting the French electorate. This VR story will bring our 360° election coverage full circle for Euronews' international audience. The experience will be available directly on desktop and mobile browsers, no need to install an app.

The ground-breaking election project created by Euronews, one of the world's pioneers in the production of immersive video reports, has received the support of Google News Lab. Euronews, Vragments and Deutsche Welle are also partnering to build Fader, a web-based VR storytelling tool. This effort receives funding from Google's Digital News Initiative.

Euronews hopes that this new coverage model will inspire journalists for future elections, such as those in Germany in September.


Thomas Seymat, VR editor, Euronews
"Euronews is one of the leading publishers of immersive journalism in Europe, so working closely with Vragments allows us to put the most innovative tools, like its Fader platform, to the service of our journalistic storytelling."


Linda Rath-Wiggins, CEO and co-founder, Vragments GmbH
"Working with Euronews has allowed us to understand the journalistic workflow of immersive storytelling in a newsroom. We align our VR tool Fader to journalists' needs and it has been fantastic to work with such a forward-thinking team like Euronews."

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