This paper aims to highlight various aspects of the design, development, and evaluation processes of immersive XR experiences. It focuses on the creative and expressive aspects of virtual environments (VEs), following the design and implementation processes of artistic VEs as conducted by the under- graduate students of the Department of Digital Arts and Cinema at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) and the Department of Digital Arts at the University of Malta (UoM), in the course of three laboratory classes of Digital Artistic Creation and Immersive Experience Design, during the academic years 2020–2021 and 2022–2023. Medium-related challenges are discussed in relation to the design and implementation of user interaction, 3D content creation, 3D composition and social engagement in VEs. Furthermore, theoretical approaches of storytelling within VEs and the narrative design process of artistic VEs are discussed. Selected case studies from the students’ virtual artworks are analysed in relation to the applied narrative types and structures. As a further elaboration on the evaluation of XR experiences, a CAVE system is analysed in terms of various characteristics that may affect the quality of the experience.

This article discusses how a digital film scouting for Virtual Production (VP) affects the process of creating diverse audiovisual works, what criteria should be taken into account when choosing a location, what techniques can be used to make the best use of its potential, and how film locations fit into the broader context of the film. For this purpose, various examples and case studies will be presented to better illustrate the impact of location on the process of creating and producing an audiovisual work.

This paper continues the discussion on advanced jurisprudence, outlined in Algorithms, Ethics and Justice (Hadzi, 2022), where restorative justice was proposed for the mitigation of artificial intelligence (AI) crimes. Algorithms, Ethics and Justice proposed an alternative approach to the current legal system by looking into restorative justice for AI crimes, and how the ethics of care could be applied to AI technologies. The paper signifies an expanded version of Hadzi’s contribution to the Digital Research in Humanities and Art Conference (Hadzi, 2023), focusing on the notion of cyber offenses in extended reality (XR), given the rise of the metaverse (Anderson, Rainie, 2022; Chohan, 2022), and the future scenario of bio-metrical data of EEG capable headsets (Graham, 2022) being misused by rogue companies and/or criminals (Jaber, 2022; Nair et al., 2022; Zhao et al., 2022). The authors Begin by questioning the cyberspace – including the emerging metaverse – as public sphere, i.e. a social space in which democracy is being enacted to explore open justice in extended realities (XR), and then by continuing the discussion around the right to be forgotten and the freedom of the press versus privacy, through a comparative analysis between the legal situation in the EU and that of the USA. The paper concludes by warning against excessive state control while attempting to project a desirable scenario of multiple digital public spheres.

The article describes the practice of implementing e-learning in Norway and Iceland using Oslo Metropolitan University, Reykjavik University and the University of Iceland as examples. The interest in this problem came from the fact that the Nordic countries are leaders in online learning and I had the opportunity to teach at the universities analyzed. Having close contact with the way of teaching in Norway and Iceland, I asked whether some elements of teaching from the analyzed Nordic countries could be implemented in Poland. Thus, the aim of the article is to introduce the basics of the specifics of teaching at the selected universities and to consider whether the proven methods can be implemented in Poland. The basis of the article was therefore participatory observation, and the results of work with Norwegian and Icelandic students prove that Nordic methods of work can be – at least to some extend – transferred to the Polish educational market (not only in higher education, but also, for example, in corporate e-learning).

The objective of the article is an attempt to identify the most important topics shaping the media industryin the second decade of the 21st century, which can be identified with the digitization phase in the development of the industry. The thematic analysis covered 591 publications that appeared in three leading scientific journals in the field of media management and media economics, i.e. “Journal of Media Economics”, “International Journal on Media Management” and “Journal of Media Business Studies”. The results of the conducted analysis were compared with the topics indicated by leading researchers in this area in leading publications defining media management and media economics, i.e. Handbook of Media Management and Economics. Differences can be observed between the topics indicated by experts as trends in the development of the industry and those dealt with by researchers publishing in scientific journals. This is important from the point of view of defining media management and media economics and further development of this field.

Numerous “free speech” platforms have been launched in recent years as a form of protest against content moderation practices on mainstream social media. This paper asks the question of how the issue of these emerging right-wing alternative social media is discursively constructed, taking as an example the Polish conservative media debate over the American service Parler and its Polish equivalent Albicla. Taking a critically discursive approach, the article provides an analysis of the discursive strategies applied, and critically embeds the findings in the broader socio-political context, as well as in the alternative media theory. The results show that, drawing on the wartime rhetoric and numerous references to Poland’s non-democratic past, the discourse creates a populist narrative of identity conflict between two opposing groups: “them” – hostile “leftists” seeking to impose a radical, progressive social order and “us” – oppressed protectors of freedom and common-sense values. The study additionally indicates that the issue is also utilised for the purposes of rivalry between domestic right-wing factions. Furthermore, the data contains frequent reference to issues of political economy and thus, intriguingly, overlaps to some extent with left-wing media critique, in that both agree on the necessity of contesting a monopolised media market and developing alternative means of communication.