Abstract
This chapter presents an action-based approach to presence. It starts by briefly describing the theoretical and empirical foundations of this approach, formalized into three key notions of place/space, action and mediation. In the light of these notions, some common assumptions about presence are then questioned: assuming a neat distinction between virtual and real environments, taking for granted the contours of the mediated environment and considering presence as a purely personal state. Some possible research topics opened up by adopting action as a unit of analysis are illustrated. Finally, a case study on driving as a form of mediated presence is discussed, to provocatively illustrate the flexibility of this approach as a unified framework for presence in digital and physical environments.
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Notes
- 1.
This might remind the reader of the idea of using behavioral measures as indices of presence (e.g., Freeman et al. 2000; Lepecq et al. 2009; Sheridan 1992); but while those behavioral measures are considered as ‘symptoms’ of a phenomenon that is hidden to an observer, here action is considered as the exact the locus in which presence is achieved.
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Acknowledgments
Previous versions of this work were presented at the Presence 2004 workshop in Valencia and published in the PsychNology Journal. The authors would like to express their gratitude for the comments and the hints collected so far, from anonymous reviewers and colleagues. We would also like to thank Ivan Gobbo and Antonio Boito who participated in the study of mediated driving by collecting the data and composing the images.
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Gamberini, L., Spagnolli, A. (2015). An Action-Based Approach to Presence: Foundations and Methods. In: Lombard, M., Biocca, F., Freeman, J., IJsselsteijn, W., Schaevitz, R. (eds) Immersed in Media. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10190-3_6
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