Multimedia, Volume 1, Issue 1 (September 2025) – 4 articles

Media shape and reflect social imaginaries, influencing collective beliefs, norms, and aspirations. Video games and films frequently depict themes like urbanization, dystopian futures, and resource-driven expansion, often envisioning humanity colonizing new planets after depleting Earth’s resources. Such narratives risk reinforcing exploitative attitudes toward the environment, extending them to new frontiers. Research has shown that media, especially video games, influence societal perceptions and shape future possibilities. While largely reflecting anthropocentric worldviews, these media also have the potential to promote ecocentric perspectives. In the context of biodiversity loss and planetary imbalance, media’s role in fostering non-anthropocentric values is crucial. This study introduces the Non-Anthropocentric Media Evaluation Questionnaire (NAMEQ), a tool designed to help media producers assess whether their work aligns with ecocentric principles, and to support academic researchers and students in the study and analysis of media from a biocentric perspective. Applying this framework to 138 widely distributed video games and films reveals a strong dominance of anthropocentric narratives. While some works incorporate ecocentric themes, they remain inconsistent. The findings underscore the need for a more deliberate and coherent representation of bio-centric values in media, advocating for a shift in cultural narratives toward perspectives that recognize and respect the intrinsic value of the non-human world. Full article

Industry 4.0 has intensified the skills gap in industrial automation education, with graduates requiring extended on boarding periods and supplementary training investments averaging USD 11,500 per engineer. This paper introduces VisFactory, a multimedia learning system that extends the cognitive theory of multimedia learning by incorporating haptic feedback as a third processing channel alongside visual and auditory modalities. The system integrates a digital twin architecture with ultra-low latency synchronization (12.3 ms) across all sensory channels, a dynamic feedback orchestration algorithm that distributes information optimally across modalities, and a tripartite student model that continuously calibrates instruction parameters. We evaluated the system through a controlled experiment with 127 engineering students randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, with assessments conducted immediately and at three-month and six-month intervals. VisFactory significantly enhanced learning outcomes across multiple dimensions: 37% reduction in time to mastery (t(125) = 11.83, p < 0.001, d = 2.11), skill acquisition increased from 28% to 85% (${\eta }_p^2=0.54$), and 28% higher knowledge retention after six months. The multimodal approach demonstrated differential effectiveness across learning tasks, with haptic feedback providing the most significant benefit for procedural skills (52% error reduction) and visual–auditory integration proving most effective for conceptual understanding (49% improvement). The adaptive modality orchestration reduced cognitive load by 43% compared to unimodal interfaces. This research advances multimedia learning theory by validating tri-modal integration effectiveness and establishing quantitative benchmarks for sensory channel synchronization. The findings provide a theoretical framework and implementation guidelines for optimizing multimedia learning environments for complex skill development in technical domains. Full article

Metaverse Recordings (MVRs), screen recordings of user experiences in virtual environments, represent a mostly underexplored field. This article addresses the integration of MVR and Multimedia Information Retrieval (MMIR). Unlike conventional media, MVRs can include additional streams of structured data, such as Scene Raw Data (SRD) and Peripheral Data (PD), which capture graphical rendering states and user interactions. We explore the technical facets of recordings in the Metaverse, detailing diverse methodologies and their implications for MVR-specific Multimedia Information Retrieval. Our discussion not only highlights the unique opportunities of MVR content analysis, but also examines the challenges they pose to conventional MMIR paradigms. It addresses the key challenges around the semantic gap in existing content analysis tools when applied to MVRs and the high computational cost and limited recall of video-based feature extraction. We present a model for MVR structure, a prototype recording system, and an evaluation framework to assess retrieval performance. We collected a set of 111 MVRs to study and evaluate the intricacies. Our findings show that SRD and PD provide significant, low-cost contributions to retrieval accuracy and scalability, and support the case for integrating structured interaction data into future MMIR architectures. Full article