Structural and Semiotic Features of the Virtual Narrative in Immersive RIA.Lab Projects

The article examines the semiotic features of the virtual narrative in the projects of RIA.Lab platform of the leading Russian news agency “Russia Today”. The aim is to analyze the structural, linguistic and iconic elements of the virtual narrative in relation to the projects of immersive journalism, highlighting their features, taking into account the multimodal nature of virtual reality and the simulative aspect of the sign system of immersive works. Virtual space is not only a narrative environment with special topos, chronotope and other narrative elements, but is itself a semiotic element, participating in the process of semiosis, the space of virtual “language game”. The thesis is put forward that VR, being an element of the multimodal information and communication universe, contains in its structure other modalities (TV, radio, cinema, print formats), and is multidimensional, a kind of “modus in modus”. The thesis on the priority of the modeling approach to the creation of immersive mass-media content over the simulative one and the necessity of observing the balance between modeling and simulation in immersive journalism are discussed. The specifics of conventional conditions of interpretation of simulacra signs in virtual space, which depend on the degree of their identity to the signs of real reality and the “rules of the virtual game”, set by the authors, are outlined. The directions of increasing the pragmatic efficiency of virtual narrative through the variability of its affords, the use of emphases, haptics (tactile experience) and other means of VR are outlined.