Parrot AR. Drone [Source: Wikipedia]
This is drone journalism in action: a piece on Nebraska’s drought produced by the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
UAVs fitted with cameras may be “unmanned” on the aircraft itself, but they will need considerable human resourcing, with a capable pilot on the ground, and additional support.
The potential uses for UAVs fitted with cameras are wide-ranging: for sports reporting, crisis and event coverage, environmental reports, for scoping dangerous areas …
With all those opportunities also come various big questions: how will widespread and mainstream use of UAVs for journalism be controlled and regulated? How should news organisations treat third-party content? What are the associated privacy and data protection issues?
The event at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism brought together specialists from the UAV industry, representatives from a number of news organisations, media lawyers, academics and aviation regulators to discuss these and other questions.
A report from the Reuters Institute will follow in due course. For further information, please contact: Professor Robert Picard, Dr Daniel Bennett or Dr David Goldberg.
Further reading:
- Drone Journalism Lab
- ‘Here come flying news robots’, Matt Waite, TheTyee.ca
- ‘Is Drone Journalism coming to the UK?’ Daniel Bennett, Frontline Club
- ‘The BBC’s own “drone” lab’, Aerospace Insight Blog
- ‘Drone journalism takes off’, Mark Corcoran, ABC News
