In March 2017, Knight Foundation, along with partners Google News Lab and the Online News Association, launched the Journalism 360 Challenge to advance the use of virtual reality and other immersive storytelling approaches in the field of journalism. AI-generated Anonymity in VR Journalism chosen as one of the 11 final projects among 800 applicants from around the world. 

We are ever grateful to our funding partner the grant challenge to support this projects to tackle some of the most critical challenges facing the advancement of immersive journalism: the need for better tools and trainings, the development of best practices, and new use cases. We are grateful to the Google News Lab, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Online News Association that created Journalism 360, a coalition of hundreds of journalists from around the world to build new skills required to tell immersive stories.

We would like to express our gratitude to all of project participants, students, actor and actress for joining us in the experimental creation of this application. We extend our sincere thanks to our institutions School of Interactive Arts & Technology, Simon Fraser University and School of Journalism, University of British Columbia.   

Videos are filmed by Mike Lakusiak, Aynur Kadir & Reese Muntean, processed with AI deep dream by Steve DiPaola, Ozge Yalcin and Marie Louka.

This website was designed by Kate Hennessy, Aynur Kadir, and Marie Louka at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology.