From Telepresence to the Metaverse - An Analysis of Trends in Immersive Media Research, 1990–2025

Bibliographic Data

ID21983785
AuthorsWojciech Welskop (0000-0002-9457-0586, University of Economics in Katowice, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume4
Issue64
Publication date2025-12-30
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueKultura - Media - Teologia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2081-8971 • E-ISSN: 2081-8971
PublisherCardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (PUBLISHER • PL)
DOI10.21697/kmt.2025.64.20
OpenAlexW7122696482
LanguageEN
References cited22

The article examines the evolution of research on immersive media between 1990 and 2025, tracing the shift from approaches focused on telepresence, understood as the technological illusion of presence, to the contemporary discourse on the metaverse, conceptualized as a platform-based, social, and algorithmic environment. The aim of the study was to reconstruct the dominant concepts across successive decades, identify thematic clusters present in the literature, and outline the conceptual trajectory leading from telepresence to the metaverse. The analysis employed the co-word method, rooted in the tradition of social network analysis (SNA), using VOSviewer software and a dataset of 42,704 articles retrieved from the Scopus database. The findings indicate that the 1990s were dominated by technological and ergonomic perspectives, the early 2000s by educational applications, the period 2010–2019 by social and platform-related aspects, and the post-2020 era by hybrid approaches combining VR, AR, artificial intelligence, pedagogy, and social contexts. The trajectory from telepresence to the metaverse confirms that immersion is no longer solely a technological issue but rather a component of a complex ecosystem of communication, education, and digital culture

Affordance · Avatar · Illusion · Metaverse · Social media · Social network analysis · Social worlds · Thematic analysis · Virtual reality · Digital Education and Society · Digital Media and Philosophy · Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts

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