Playing vs. viewing: the impact of media environment immersion on the understanding of virtual place meaning in screen-mediated contexts

The development and popularisation of digital media are reshaping our spatial cognition and accelerating the fusion of virtual and physical place experiences. However, research on how place meaning is understood in screen-mediated virtual spaces and how media environments with varying levels of immersion shape this understanding remains underexplored. This study addresses two core questions: How do digital media with different levels of immersion influence the understanding of place meaning in screen-mediated virtual places? And what is the relationship between virtual and physical place experiences in this process? Through a comparative case study of the ‘Pixel China’ project on Bilibili, we analyse the experiential differences between high-immersion video game players and low-immersion social media viewers. Findings reveal that players, through immersive place construction, cultivate a dialectical place attitude and reconstruct virtual places as expressions of personal spatial vision. In contrast, viewers, through collective interpretation and association, perceive virtual places as digital utopias for reflecting upon physical environment. This study contributes to digital geography by clarifying the mediating role of media environments in virtual place meaning construction and the virtual-physical place interactive relationship.