A significant part of the early work on presence looked to depict users’ experience with cutting-edge technologies, for example, virtual reality (Lee, 2004). Such work has since been applied too modern, commercially accessible media technologies including television, film, consoles and computer games (Biocca et al. 2019). The two most studied dimensions of presence, are spatial presence and social presence (Abdelqader 2018). Spatial presence, which is additionally called physical presence, is a person’s sense that the individual is immersed in the environment, “realm” or “world” introduced in the media (Cohen and Zemach 1986). The idea has regularly been applied to interactive media, for example, consoles and pc games and virtual situations like “VRChat” (Chen et al. 2018). Be that as it may, spatial presence has likewise been considered with more linear, less interactive audiovisual media, for example, television and film (Carreira et al. 2018). Social presence, interestingly, relates perceptions about a mediated individual or character (Burd and Coats, 2002). It is characterised by Lee (2004) as “a psychological state in which virtual … social actors are experienced as actual social actors in either sensory or non-sensory ways” (p. 45). Each is tended to briefly below (Weir et al. 2019).

Spatial presence can be influenced by the features and nature of the medium or technology that an individual is utilising (Weir et al. 2019). On account of audiovisual media material, for example, motion pictures and television programming, technological features that have been found to increment spatial presence incorporate bigger image size, higher image resolution, utilisation of subjective camera framing, and the utilisation of 3D (Biocca et al. 2019). These components additionally make a difference between digital games and virtual conditions (Chen et al. 2018). In addition, sentiments of spatial presence can be improved in these media by interactive features that enable players to feel that they are better able to control or influence the virtual realm or the advancement of the game (Burd and Coats, 2002). Further, game controllers that are increasingly intuitive and simpler to utilise have been found to bring out a more grounded feeling of spatial presence in exploratory studies of moderately unpracticed players (Lee, 2004).

A motive behind why interactive features and intuitive controllers may add to a presence in digital games is that they improve players’ feeling of competence, control, and ability (An and Lee, 2010). Players’ subjective evaluations of these factors have likewise been observed to be related to a more grounded sense of spatial presence (Lee, 2004). An individual’s proclivity with the substance is another individual factor that can upgrade spatial presence (Chen et al. 2018). Devoted sports fans, for instance, have been found to encounter progressively spatial presence concerning sports media, for example, broadcasted games and sports-themed video games than individuals who are less excited about the subject (Biocca et al. 2019). 

Spatial presence can form the reactions of audiences and users (Chen et al. 2018). It is related to happiness (An and Lee, 2010). Like perceptions of reality more generally, spatial presence has additionally been argued to add to media effects and effective results (Weir et al. 2019). One component is that the expansion in satisfaction related with spatial presence drives people to invest more energy with the material, in this way taking into consideration more opportunities for social learning and more grounded cultivation or reinforcement effects (Carreira et al. 2018). Analysts have additionally proposed that spatial presence legitimately upgrades media impacts (Weir et al. 2019). Quite a bit of this work thinks about whether the power of spatial presence felt by the player of a violent video game fortifies the effect of the game on that player’s forceful inclinations by influencing the experience to appear to be increasingly vivid or progressively pertinent (Nowak et al. 2008). Nonetheless, the proposed mechanisms recommend that spatial presence could influence different results, given various sorts of game content (Chen et al. 2018). For instance, spatial presence could likewise improve the beneficial outcomes of a prosocial game designed to increase empathy (Lee, 2004). 

Social presence is an intricate and multidimensional idea (Biocca et al. 2019). It tends to be evoked by avatars, which are mediated portrayals of different people, and by virtual operators, which are interactive, computerised simulations of individuals (Chen et al. 2018). A case of an avatar is a character constrained by a player in a video game, though instances of virtual operators incorporate non-player characters in video games and the virtual individual assistants that are customised into numerous smartphones (Weir et al. 2019). Social presence can include explicit evaluations, as when a PC controlled virtual agent passes the “Turing test” and is seen as a human’s avatar, or when a video game user reports having a palpable sense of associating with another player in the virtual world (Biocca et al. 2019). Be that as it may, it might likewise reflect oblivious presumptions or perceptions, as when a virtual agent inspires a behavioural or emotional reaction from the user as though it were a genuine individual (Lee, 2004). PC users, for instance, frequently apply social and behavioural standards or norms to their machines, even with full knowledge that they are fake or artificial (Nowak et al. 2008).

Characteristics of a communication medium that add to perceptions of social presence incorporate the wealth of the communication medium and the interactive features it offers (Echterhoff and Schmalbach, 2018). Characteristics of the substance that add to social presence incorporate the visual and behavioural realism of the avatar or virtual operator (Burd and Coats, 2002). The relationship between this sort of realism and social presence is by all accounts curvilinear (Fischhoff 1995). That is avatars or virtual agents whose appearance or behaviour all the more closely emulates that of a genuine individual will, in general, bring out more grounded sentiments of presence and increasingly positive evaluations up to a specific point (Chen et al. 2018). After that point, exceptionally realistic virtual operators fall into the “uncanny valley” (Simon and Greitemeyer 2019). They are seen as eerie, and in this way bring out more uneasiness and more prominent separation than less realistic agents (Weir et al. 2019). The hypothesis suggests that, when an agent’s appearance and behaviour is so realistic to the point that the individual interfacing with it doesn’t see it to be fake, there will be an expansion in social presence and positive evaluations (Biocca et al. 2019).

More research has concentrated on the antecedents of a social presence than on its effects or implications (Amérigo et al. 2019). In any case, social presence is thought to add to increasingly positive user evaluations of communication innovation (Chen et al. 2018). People who have a feeling of social presence while collaborating with a virtual assistance specialist, for instance, can be progressively happy with the interaction (Burd and Coats, 2002). Feeling along these lines may likewise add to task results by encouraging participation among participants in virtual environments (Abdelqader 2018). Also, sentiments of social presence with mediated personae or representatives, regardless of whether genuine or virtual, are believed to be related with more grounded enticing effects in that they lead people to be increasingly drawn in with the message (Echterhoff and Schmalbach, 2018).

With regards to the above points, I would like to talk about a quote from Marshall McLuhan who claims that “all media exists to invest our lives with artificial perception and arbitrary values” in his 1964 book Understanding Media (McLuhan 1964). The perception of the quote defines the idea of a new reality (Weir et al. 2019). As McLuhan’s point was that electronic culture is no more corrupt, then print media culture and that language is a type of technology within itself, anticipating and rejecting the moralism of modern-day Luddites (McLuhan 1964). This idea itself is the base of the frame as the humanised man is a representation of print media whereas the representation of perception and arbitrary values is the image of the human being dehumanised as a machine (McLuhan 1964). In which McLuhan quotes discuss the thought that the concept of people being sexual organs of the mechanical world, was the users’ way of using any medium as its substance (Biocca et al. 2019).

Similarly, as the substance of genetic code is the individual from the species that show and transmits it, when he utilised his most oracular tone (Krüger et al. 2018). Which is the frame within the gif, the remediation of this ‘sexual organs of the mechanical world’ is the frame of the message, and the quote is the perception of these ideas (McLuhan 1964).

References: 

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Amérigo, M, Bodoque, J, M, Díez-Herrero, A, García, J, A, and Olcina, J, 2019, Enhancing flash flood risk perception and awareness of mitigation actions through risk communication, A pre-post survey design, Journal of Hydrology, vol 568, no 19, pp.769-779.

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Fischhoff, B, 1995, Risk perception and communication unplugged, twenty years of process, 1 Risk analysis, vol 15, no 2, pp.137-145.

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McLuhan, M, 1964, ’The Medium is the Message’, in Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, New York, Signet, McGraw Hill, pp.1-18

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Weir, J, R, Kreuter, U,P, Wonkka, C,L, Twidwell, D., Stroman, D, A, Russell, M, and Taylor, C, A, 2019, Liability and Prescribed Fire, Perception and Reality. Rangeland Ecology & Management,vol 72, no 3, pp.533-538.