What is ‘Being There’? An ontology of the immersive experience

Media allow individuals to feel 'whisked away' from their surroundings and absorbed into another world. Constructs such as immersion, presence, transportation, and flow have been used to delineate and describe this experience, but few efforts have been made to understand their conceptual overlap or shared and distinct underlying processes. Two studies were conducted to create a model of the immersive experience applicable across media technologies and contexts. First, a scoping review shows these constructs are deeply intertwined and often seen as precursors, subcomponents, or outcomes of one another. Second, re-examining the literature from a complex systems perspective, we identify three key processes: interactivity, boundary alteration, and motivation, as especially promising for developing an integrative ontology of the immersive experience.