Virtual Reality documentary wins Peabody Award

Professor Taylor Owen worked alongside James Milward to create a Virtual Reality documentary, Ebola Outbreak: A Virtual Journey. This month, the documentary won a Peabody Award prize honoring excellence and innovation in digital storytelling. Named the Peabody-Facebook Futures of Media Award, this initiative embodies shared core interests of the Peabody Awards and Facebook in recognizing stories that matter, educate, and inspire social change.
“Ebola Outbreak” is an immersive 360 experience filmed on the ground in West Africa, tracing the outbreak’s path through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Explore for yourself in this virtual reality journey how the massive epidemic began and uncover the hidden story of what happened before the world started paying attention. With access to key global decision-makers and health responders, and riveting firsthand accounts of victims, Outbreak exposes tragic missteps in the response to the epidemic.

Taylor Owen and James Milward brought together Secret Location, FRONTLINE and Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and along with the Knight Foundation, Pietro Gagliano, Fergus Pitt, Dan Edge and Raney Aronson, produced Ebola Outbreak: A Virtual Journey.


About Taylor Owen
Taylor Owen is Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Global Affairs at the Liu Institute for Global Issues and School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia, a Senior Fellow at the Columbia Journalism School and the founder and Editor of OpenCanada.org. He was previously the Research Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University where he designed and led a program studying the impact of digital technology on the practice of journalism, and has held research positions at Yale University, The London School of Economics and The International Peace Research Institute, Oslo where his work focuses on the intersection between information technology and international affairs. His Doctorate is from the University of Oxford where he was a Trudeau Scholar. He has held Banting Postdoctoral and Action Canada Fellowships and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
View Taylor Owen’s Liu profile here.
His work can be found at www.taylorowen.com.
About James Milward
James Milward is the founder of the Emmy® Award-winning interactive agency, Secret Location, and a regular speaker on digital entertainment, transmedia and interactive documentary. As Executive Producer at Secret Location, James has built numerous award-winning, large-scale digital entertainment and brand projects.

Read more about James here.