From the physical world to a mediated reality: the impact of extended reality on fundamental rights

This dissertation examines how immersive extended reality (IXR)—including virtual, augmented, and mixed reality—reshapes fundamental rights and challenges how those rights should be understood in digital environments. As IXR develops into networked, commercially scalable infrastructure, it increasingly functions as a privatized space that mediates perception, action, and social relations. The thesis argues that IXR is not simply a new medium, but a fundamentally mediated reality that amplifies both the opportunities and risks of the digital age. Using a sociotechnical and rights-based approach, the dissertation analyzes how IXR’s distinctive affordances transform experiences of safety, privacy, and the freedoms of assembly and expression. It advances three research questions: how IXR’s structure influences user experience; how its affordances shape the exercise of fundamental rights; and how far existing EU law addresses these changes. Drawing on philosophical analysis, literature review, and doctrinal assessment of the EU’s digital governance framework, the study identifies regulatory and conceptual gaps, and develops a rights-based governance paradigm for immersive environments. The core claim is that as technological embodiment increases, the responsibilities of private platform operators to uphold users’ rights should rise accordingly. IXR platforms operate as reality-mediating infrastructures where control over embodiment, information flows, and participation amounts to governance. The thesis proposes a framework linking degrees of embodiment to heightened duties of fair procedure, informed by public-function doctrines in constitutional and administrative law. This supports a proportional allocation of responsibilities between public authorities and private operators and offers guidance for translating fundamental rights principles into immersive contexts. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that increased digitalization should not entail a loss of rights, but requires their deliberate translation into IXR architectures. It contributes a theory of mediated rights and a practical roadmap for rights-preserving governance in the age of immersion.