Responsible Drone Journalism

Astrid Gynnild, Turo Uskali, Astrid Gynnild, Turo Uskali

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138059351
• eBook ISBN: 9781351671811
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Camera drones provide unique visual perspectives and add new dimensions to storytelling and accountability in journalism. Simultaneously, the rapidly expanding uses of drones as advanced sensor platforms raise new legislative, ethical and transparency issues.

Responsible Drone Journalism investigates the opportunities and dilemmas of using drones for journalistic purposes in a global perspective. Drawing on a framework of responsible research and innovation (RRI), the book explores responsible drone journalism from multiple perspectives, including new cultures of learning, flying in lower airspace, drone education and concerns about autonomous agents and big data surveillance.

By widening the discussion of drone journalism, the book is ideal for journalism teachers and students, as well as politicians, lawmakers, drone developers and citizens with an interest in the responsible use of camera drones.

1
What is responsible drone journalism?

Astrid Gynnild and Turo Uskali

DOI: 10.4324/9781315163659-1

Introduction

A drone is a flying vehicle that is remotely piloted or programmed to perform autonomous actions. In journalism, drones are often referred to as flying robots or camera drones. More formally, they are known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned aerial systems (UASs) or remotely piloted aircrafts (RPAs). News events such as protests, floods, fires, warfare and underwater operations exemplify only a snippet of what might possibly be covered in outstanding ways with unmanned aerial vehicles available to reporters.

Since 2011, news outlets on all continents have gradually embraced the options for disseminating imagery captured by camera drones. With drones being available to anyone who is interested, professional photographers and civilians have immersed themselves in a disruptive technology that is growing into a global, multibillion-dollar industry. With new opportunities for drone experimenting, hobby pilots and data techies from a multitude of backgrounds are also attracted to the drones. This attraction, in turn, encourages further exploration of drones as a newsgathering tool, although the experimenting sometimes appears to be prompted more by the possibilities of technology than the requirements of journalism.

In this book, we explore how the rapid expansion of dronalism – the process of doing drone journalism (Goldberg et al., 2013) – challenges established journalism at its roots. In particular, we investigate the opportunities and obstacles confronting what we have termed responsible drone journalism. The concept of responsible drone journalism merges responsible journalism with drone journalism. But, as we shall explore, it does more than that.

When collecting data for this book, we were immersed in the most stunning video captures, for instance, of San Francisco day and night: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vJJ4-vgkUk. Turo experienced the joy of students who posted the first successful videos from a solo drone in the Finnish fields. We watched hours of video clips demonstrating that in the future, drone giants like Global Hawk might not be the worst autonomous warfare vehicle, although it might spend more than 30 hours in the air. The growing investments in micro or even nano-drones, barely the size of insects, open up possibilities for new kinds of urban military attacks.

At this point in history, though, politicians and entrepreneurs across the globe seem to focus predominantly on the adventurous growth prospects of the emerging civilian drone industry. In a high-tech country like Norway, commercial and civil uses of drones are promoted as the country’s new oil – products made for the international market. Drones are launched as the ultimate, complementary solution in fields as different as military espionage, electricity networks inspection and undersea iceberg identification. The Norwegian drone industry, for instance, currently employs 10,000 people but envisages employing nine times as many within three years.

Internationally, the first drone taxis are about to be available for public hire. Drone taxis might actually resolve some of the problems with traffic jams in densely populated cities. Drone taxis should be fairly easy to regulate in accordance with existing aviation rules. Due to their size, they are visible from a distance, and they create enough noise for people to become aware of their movements.

Multiple perspectivizing

In journalism, drone technology exemplifies what is defined as a disruptive innovation (Bower and Christensen, 1995; Christensen, 1997; Christensen and Raynor, 2003). With camera drones, reporters are not dependent on renting helicopters or cranes to get aerial imagery; even though camera drones in several respects are still inferior to mainstream technologies such as helicopters, drones are quicker and cheaper to use, and they can easily provide videos from areas that were previously visually inaccessible (Gynnild 2014b).

Existing research on drone journalism indicates that authors are typically concerned with ethical issues such as privacy and safety on behalf of journalists (Culver, 2014; Cruz Silva, 2016; Gynnild, 2014 a; Tremayne & Clark, 2014). Empirical studies demonstrate how drone reporters are stretched between technological opportunities on the one hand and professional codes of conduct on the other. A growing community of drone startup enthusiasts, in contrast, extends the notions of what visual journalism is or should be (Giones & Brem, 2017); educators are increasingly grappling with unexpected issues when designing drone courses in higher education (Marron, 2013). The long-term consequences of this agency are particularly interesting especially since camera drones constantly put the limits of Press Freedom around the world to the test (Lauk et al., 2016).

In the larger picture of a drone society in the making, lawmakers and government officials grapple with intricately logistical problems of unmanned aerial vehicles in lower airspace; international aviation rules are contested by governmental differences in the ways military, commercial and civilian uses of drones are perceived, and thus how various regulatory mismatches ought to be aligned. Commercial uses of drones, of which journalism constitutes a small but crucial part of the puzzle, are instigated by surprisingly large national variations in the regulatory perceptions of privacy (Silva, 2016). In his examination of the relationship between technology and culture, Howley (2018) argues that “media discourse plays a decisive role in shaping these new technologies, understanding their applications in various spheres of human activity, and integrating them into everyday life” (p. xv).

Based on our investigation of civilian drones during the last seven years, we propose that such remotely controlled, unmanned aerial vehicles are soon going to be a natural and ubiquitous part of our lives. Our digitally structured, steered and surveilled society will have to learn how to relate to unmanned aerial vehicles of all sizes, whether we like it or not. It is a fact that these vehicles are used for a great variety of purposes. Drones are no longer a military tool used mostly by allied forces in the Middle and Far East. Whether we live in big cities in the West or in remote areas of the world, as humans and citizens we will most likely be prompted to engage with the flying robots in ways that would have been unthinkable only a short time ago.

Imagine heavy traffic and logistics to be resolved, not only in the streets but in the lower airspace, up to 120 meters above ground as well. Imagine drones becoming just as common as cars and motorcycles; imagine drones taking over human work in domains as diverse as power-line inspection, humanitarian relief and espionage.

Imagine civic drones passing borders with all kinds of packages – and potentially with people, too. Female activists fly contraceptives to sisters in need in Catholic countries, while criminals use drones to smuggle weapon and drugs. Drone sports events will be organized in local, national and international levels and drone taxis can fly you over the traffic jams. These examples are not future scenarios. They are reality, even though it might still take years to implement drones fully into societies’ communication and transportation systems. Even though global society is still at an early stage of drone development, we have analyzed enough data to be convinced that drone technology alone might turn the global society, as we know it, upside down.

First, we take as a fact that drones are here to stay. Second, since we claim that the disruptive use of civic drones challenges established journalism at its roots, we wanted to discuss and propose the various ways that these challenges might be responsibly encountered and possibly overcome. With the pace demonstrated by the rapidly expanding global drone industry, there seems to be no way back. But there might be several ways forward.

The case of micro air vehicles (MAVs)

In the aftermath of the first wave of enthusiastic experimenting with camera drones in journalism, new questions arise, including this one: in what ways might, or should, news professionals relate constructively to future swarms of micro air vehicles (MAVs)? These mechanical insects and insect swarms are developed by the military and constructed to work in urban areas. This technology has already grown to the point where drone insects, individually or in swarms, can operate within and outside of buildings and be equipped with suction cups. They can crawl, climb and be airdropped or hand launched. Once in place, according to marketing videos from the US Air Force, these invisible machines can be on missions that last for days and weeks. They are supposed to be able to tap energy from power lines or harvest energy from sunlight and winds. According to the video clip, which is one of several carrying the same message, the system “remains robust even when GPS is unavailable.” When operating in swarms, the MAVs can oversee or attack large areas in no time.

But anyone with some knowledge of MAVs knows that micro-drones might be capable of more than filming. They might carry chemicals or sensors that detect chemicals, depending on their mission as autonomous agents. Just like the larger drones, MAVs serve the goals established by humans. When MAVs operate individually and autonomously, though, these micro machines are invisible to the human eye and noiseless. They are too small to be regulated by aviation rules, but they could, for instance, easily fly into an office and glue themselves to a place under a president’s desk. As advanced sensor platforms, even nano-drones and micro-drones are equipped for collecting multiple layers of data. They are easily integrated with other technologies and are thus capable of remotely piloted mass surveillance. It is likely that these tools are going to be adopted by journalists, too. Responsible drone journalism appears to be a complex field indeed.

As researchers and journalists engaged in dronalism, we are obliged to find out more about drone technologies and their potential uses. The time is over for the one approach to drone development that is either high-tech optimistic or high-tech pessimistic – either critical or constructive. The time is here to find out what is really going on within these polarities from multiple perspectives.

We firmly believe that journalists, along with researchers and educators, at this point in time have a crucial opening to explore, inform, influence and impact on the further direction and governance of the ongoing evolution of drones in a responsible manner. Even though the use of civic drones remains a predominantly local and hyperlocal phenomenon, drone issues are of increasing concern to humans nationwide as well as worldwide. But to steer the flying robots in wanted directions requires new kinds of insights in tandem with an informed willingness to act and to take new kinds of risks. Thus, we propose that the term responsible drone journalism has a double meaning.

The aim of this book is thus fourfold: 1) to provide a conceptual overview, along with “down-to-earth” illustrations/cases of the multifaceted uses of camera drones in journalism; 2) to discuss aviation laws and the regulatory challenges of dronalism; 3) to discuss ethical dilemmas and raise awareness about privacy, transparency and surveillance aspects of using drones as a journalistic tool; and 4) to report and discuss in what ways drone technologies might be responsibly incorporated into higher education.

The responsible research and innovation approach (RRI)

In this book, we therefore suggest that taking action in accordance with the ideas and tools of responsible research and innovation (RRI) is one way to go. RRI is a methodological framework that helps to facilitate the co-creational, collaborative resources of universities, industry, education and civic society (Owen et al., 2012; Stilgoe et al., 2013; von Schomberg, 2011). The approach is closely linked to Horizon 2020 and to governance research efforts to develop a responsible technological growth in countries within the European Union. The framework is rapidly spreading to other continents and countries as well.

Proponents of the RRI approach aim to find sustainable solutions to the grand challenges of our time by filling in what is referred to as the responsibility gap from the lack of governmental control in a free market. Thus, seen from a visionary journalism perspective, the theme in this book addresses the grand challenges of knowledge and of security in society through a drone lens.

It should be mentioned here that the research project that was the breeding ground for this book, ViSmedia, www.vismedia.org, is derived from a responsible research and innovation approach. In the ViSmedia project, it is our job as researchers to explore the ideas of the RRI framework and to investigate how they might be adopted and adapted in emerging fields such as drone journalism. It has taken a good deal of time to get on the inside of these ideas. And at the same time, we find that the responsibility aspect of journalism innovation does have much to offer.

In the seminal work on responsible research and innovation, Owen and Stilgoe, the most prominent spokespeople of responsible research and innovation, suggested that the RRI approach is built on four pillars (Owen et al., 2012; Stilgoe et al., 2013) for action. These pillars, as discussed by Stilgoe et al., are anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion and responsiveness. They point to different stages in responsible research and innovation processes, and require from the people involved that they, too, ask what-if questions at every stage of the process.

In a civic drone context, these four pillars might be considered idealistic requirements of responsible learning among stakeholders using and developing a technology. To work responsibly with technological innovations means that people involved should not only explore what is technologically possible to carry out; any innovational process should be accompanied by systematic reflections and deliberation on what might happen in a diversity of contexts. Anticipation in the form of foresight and scenario building plays an important role. The RRI approach prompts participants to reflect critically on the long-term consequences of their developmental actions and to identify unexpected issues that might surface on the way. The responsiveness dimension prompts participants to be flexible about changing course during any project, in response to the processes of ongoing reflection and deliberation.

The dilemma of governance not being able to control what individuals do with the new technologies actualizes the framework of responsible research and innovation. The so-called normative anchor points that should be reflected in the production processes of new technologies, according to RRI, are that the products should be ethically acceptable, that they should contribute to sustainable development and that they should be socially desirable (Owen et al., 2012) – whatever that means to journalism. These anchor points might seem appropriate and accurate at first glance, but they are challenging to define and live up to in practice. As defined by Stilgoe et al. (2013: 1570): “Responsible innovation means taking care of the future through collective stewardship of science and innovation in the present.”

A requirement to researchers following the tenets of responsible research and innovation is, moreover, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 What is responsible drone journalism?
• 2 The first wave of drone journalism: from activist tool to global game changer
• 3 Dronalism, newsgathering protection and day-to-day norms
• 4 Transparency or surveillance?: dilemmas of piloting autonomous agents
• 5 Drones, teaching and the value of the explorative player-coach
• 6 Taking risks with drones: responsible innovation pedagogy for media education
• 7 Three scenarios of responsible drone journalism
• Index