Abstract
The concept of presence has become the focus of an increasing amount of attention in both academic and public forums, but scholars have developed divergent and overlapping definitions of the concept, which threatens to inhibit our progress in understanding presence phenomena. In this chapter we present a framework for untangling the conceptualizations and promote a standardized terminology for discussing and defining presence. A brief consideration of the benefits and dangers of the endeavor is followed by an overview of the origins and evolution of presence terminology, presentation of the definitional framework, and recommendations for its use.
We define presence as the feeling of being located in a perceptible external world around the self.
Waterworth et al. (2015)
Presence is the experience of being engaged by the representations of a virtual world.
Jacobson (2002)
Presence [is defined formally as t]he perceptual illusion of nonmediation.
Lombard and Ditton (1997)
Presence is tantamount to successfully supported action in the environment.
Zahorik and Jenison (1998)
The sense of presence considered here is… a numinous [i.e., supernatural, sacred, holy] sense of otherness.
Cheyne (2001)
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Lombard, M., Jones, M.T. (2015). Defining Presence. In: Lombard, M., Biocca, F., Freeman, J., IJsselsteijn, W., Schaevitz, R. (eds) Immersed in Media. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10190-3_2
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