Exploring opportunities and pitfalls of nurturing empathy through Virtual Reality in higher education in Norway

New media, such as virtual technologies (VR), are increasingly used with the aim of providing more immersive experiences in learning in schools and universities, including the nurturing of empathy, which is considered important for strengthening democracy, tolerance and social justice. In this article, we explore how students in higher education in Norway understand and interpret empathy in VR immersion. Students at two Norwegian universities watched three examples of VR videos designed to foster empathy, and our analysis is based on focus group discussions with these students. Our analysis is guided by anthropological and sociological conceptualisations of empathy, as well as decolonial perspectives on empathy that emphasise the need for cultural ‘translation’ for empathy to be meaningful across geopolitical contexts. Our results show that the concept empathy is more complex than often recognized by producers of VR content. For empathy to be transformative rather than result in ‘virtual othering’, it is essential to consider the significance of positionality and contextuality of those involved in empathic relations and encounters, rather than assume universality, both in terms of the actors involved (who the empathiser is) and conceptualisations of empathy (what empathy is).