First Take: Used in two senses in journalism: to refer to the reportorial strategy of involving oneself deeply in the scene or milieu being reported on; and, especially in narrative journalism, to a style that creates this feeling of “being there” for the reader..
           

Deeper: The boundary or difference between these two different usages, however, is not always self-evident. For instance, that the term sometimes becomes a modifier (as in “immersion journalism”) reflects the notion that this second, stylistic effect is often taken as evidence of success at the first, at being embedded in a social or cultural grouping or condition. In fact, that may not necessarily follow; in truth, no definable criteria for “success” at immersion (say, in a given culture or subculture) have actually been laid out, and a style can never “testify” to reporting practice. Meanwhile, this frequent blurring of the two meanings also suggests why immersion is sometimes used interchangeably with the word “undercover”: that is, if a reporter adopts a undercover identity without being detected, it is often assumed immersion has occurred. In fact, some theorists have postulated that even the deepest of undercover narrators actually double as “immersed” but not—that is, as readers we are rarely if ever convinced a writer has actually become the person in whose role they travel. The journalist, in other words, remains our emissary even when the subjects about whom he or she writes may be deceived.

Recommended Reading:  Kate Baldwin, “Black Like Who?:  Cross-Testing the ‘Real’ Lines of John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me,” Cultural Critique 40.0 (1998 Fall): 103-143.