Examining Knowledge Production on Virtual and Augmented Reality Technologies

The Social Grammars of Virtuality, a yearly report examining knowledge production on extended reality (XR) technologies and experiences, was launched in May 2023. The impetus behind this report was the combination of a societal saturation of and appetite for XR, coupled with unbridled rhetoric from industry, media, and even, at times, academia. Indeed, the last decades have seen a sharp rise in the number of English-language, peer-reviewed articles published on XR. For example, a scoping review for the year 1992, when this journal was launched, shows there were about 100 articles published about XR. By 2023, the year we launched our report, that figure had increased to close to 9,000 annual publications (see Figure 1). In turn, we felt the time was ripe to systematically examine the knowledge production around XR to be able to glean insights about how it is being theorized, operationalized, and discussed, as well as to be able to critically ground and evaluate XR industry claims. Figure 1.XR-themed articles per year.We are thankful for the invitation from this journal's editor to share some observations from the Social Grammars of Virtuality project. We will outline the parts comprising the report and some findings from the first two editions. The report can loosely be divided into three overarching parts: the first provides a knowledge mapping backdrop of all the peer-reviewed publications on XR in English each year. We create this pool by systematically searching Scopus (which comprises approximately 28,000 journals) with key terms related to XR. Within these results, we quantitatively chart the intellectual, geographic, and funding sources of XR research as well as provide a qualitative analysis. These approaches in combination tell us about the high-level themes and resources driving XR scholarship. It is worth briefly adding that for the Social Grammars of Virtuality report, XR refers primarily to the two most prominent forms found across the publications: virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), although artificial intelligence is increasingly entering this mix in ways that may prove to be impactful.The second part of the report examines specific parameters of XR scholarship in more depth: theories, methods, language, and technologies. As a publication emanating from a school of communication, the Social Grammars of Virtuality gravitates toward humanistic questions we felt were largely missing from the overarching academic literature; that is, how we use XR in our societies to communicate with one another and, simultaneously, how we communicate about XR. Importantly, the latter gets at questions of theory, method, and technology, which we argue are sociocultural constructs underpinned by language. Thus, we are particularly interested in uncovering trends in these constructs; hence, the focus of part two of the report on the methods, theories, language, and types of technologies employed in XR scholarship. The sources of data we selected for these more in-depth analyses are several core journals that are dedicated to XR research, peer-reviewed, and published in English. In 2023 these journals included Presence: Virtual and Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Frontiers in Virtual Reality, and Virtual Creativity.The third part of the report provides a brief overview of key XR market developments within a given year. It is not based on academic literature but rather, primarily on popular publications and corporate press releases. One could expect that many of the technological developments that are included in this part of the report find their way into academic XR research in future years.Several findings from the Social Grammars of Virtuality reports may be of interest to this journal's readership. For example, the most prolific disciplines publishing XR work are computer science, engineering, and medicine; however, the fastest growing discipline in 2023 was social sciences (see Figure 2). Figure 2.Publications by discipline in 2023. NOTE. The Scopus database yields 8,905 peer-reviewed articles published in English in 2023.While not the largest discipline by publication output, the growth of social sciences scholarship signals a step toward critical and multifaceted explorations of XR technologies within society. A significant number of the articles comprising the social sciences category are not just about refining technologies and better testing existing concepts but rather, about examining the very concepts and contexts we work with as tools that need to be sharpened, too. It is also worth noting that research on AR technologies is rapidly increasing throughout many disciplines, including the social sciences. This development is beginning to mirror market conditions and the social reality of XR use, which leans heavily toward AR experiences.Another key observation from the Social Grammars of Virtuality reports points toward the need for concept clarification as well as theorization of XR research—though not necessarily through the introduction of new theories. For instance, titles such as “The phenomenon of presence in virtual reality is mistakenly equated with immersion” (Korżel & Łupkowski, 2023) and “What Do We Mean When We Say Presence?” (Murphy & Skarbez, 2020), suggest that communication matters are, and should be, of central interest to XR enquiry. As our own reports discovered, many of the articles within the key four journals over-relied on concepts like “immersion” without clarifying what they meant and treated these concepts as static, without accounting for the many ways that they can be unsettled along individual, cultured, gendered, and accessibility fault lines.Furthermore, our reports uncovered that many of the articles surveyed are atheoretical, in that they do not refer to any specific theories or that they reference theory only in passing. Instead, they rely upon assumptions of shared concepts and meaning making which, as it turns out, may not be so widely shared. Of specific interest is the gap in theorizing or drawing on theories of the body and space—arguably the cornerstones of XR experiences. Similarly, the rise in works engaging with AR would also require some conceptual and, potentially, theoretical disentangling between the latter and VR. Nonetheless, new theories may not be needed. For instance, Holbert et al. (2022) advocate for the value of examining boundary conditions of existing theories. Another option would be to borrow from the humanities and specifically, philosophy and arts, which were amongst the first to address virtuality long before the Oculus headset existed. Indeed, some of the earliest issues of this very journal took on creative, theoretical, and experimental formats of knowledge production in VR, including freestyle, poetic pieces like “Beep” by Patricia Bishop (1992), which interrogated the tensions inherent in technologically mediated communication.In its first two issues, the Social Grammars of Virtuality has already documented the changing landscape of XR scholarship in general, and spaces where we think a social science approach in particular could make important interventions in understanding and application. In a field that is often driven by development and technology firms (which we see reflected in our analysis of the literature), we are encouraged by the opportunity not only to reflect upon current conditions, but also to inform how XR development proceeds. As multiple years of report data accrue, we welcome feedback and collaborations with the readership of this journal.