Mapping the Metaverse: Discourse, media and cultural production

Abstract

This article examines the discursive construction of the metaverse as it circulates across media, professional, political, and academic arenas. Drawing on a cross-media and cross-platform corpus of 22 567 digital documents (including posts on X, YouTube videos, podcasts, radio and television broadcasts, press articles, books, and scholarly publications), the study maps how the term metaverse is framed, negotiated, and mobilised within an extended public sphere. Using a corpus-based mapping approach, the analysis shows that the metaverse does not correspond to a single stabilised technological object, but rather operates as a flexible sociotechnical imaginary. It functions simultaneously as a catch-all metaphor for the future of the Internet and as a discursive assemblage situated at the intersection of video game virtual worlds, extended reality technologies, and decentralised digital infrastructures. The results highlight the central role of generalist and specialist media, as well as intermediary actors, in sustaining and structuring metaverse-related discourse, largely by monitoring industrial news and innovation narratives. Within this landscape, cultural industries emerge as a key site for both the production of metaverse narratives and the development of immersive content. Rather than signalling conceptual instability, the discursive elasticity of the metaverse enables experimentation across technological, economic, and cultural domains.