VR-participation: The feasibility of the virtual reality-driven multi-modal communication technology facilitating e-Participation

Textual communication which currently has largely shifted from paper to digital space is predominant in the domain of e-Participation. Even though the ubiquitous text-based communication through forums, chats, emails and social media is easy to use and process it shows significant lack of expressivity. Despite the proliferation of voice-based and video-based teleconferencing solutions compensating the communication gap in textual channels the contemporary digital communication systems struggle to deliver close to face-to-face group communication experience. Therefore, major government and citizen meetings and hearings have to be held in person to ensure quality discussions. In this paper, we argue that multi-modal communication enabled by the emerging, affordable and accessible VR technologies creates an opportunity to integrate the majority of mainstream channels into one communication platform.