Keeping an eagle eye on Drone Journalism
What journalists need to know about reporting with birds’ eyes
Friday, May 31, 2019
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Saturday, May 25, 2019
Friday, May 24, 2019
Thursday, May 23, 2019
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Monday, May 20, 2019
Saturday, May 18, 2019
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Thursday, May 16, 2019
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Jane Rhodes Professor
Leading and Innovating
“People keep making the joke that I didn’t come here for the weather,” Professor Jane Rhodes said, when discussing what drew her to the University of Illinois at Chicago from Minnesota’s Macalester College, where she served as professor and chair of American Studies and as the dean for the Study of Race and Ethnicity within the college. “Although it’s warmer in Chicago, believe it or not, than it is in the Twin Cities.”
Rhodes, professor and head of the African American Studies department at UIC since January 2015, is a noted interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests include the relationship between media and communication practices, race, and African American communities. Since receiving her PhD in Mass Communication Research from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Rhodes’ work has explored how marginalized communities utilize print, film, electronic media, and music as modes for resistance and empowerment. She is particularly interested in the ways in which people use media as a critical tool in social movements.
Rhodes was not even officially on the job market when the opportunity to work at UIC came up, but the draw of the university forced her to reconsider: “UIC is an innovator in interdisciplinarity, and working in urban communities,” she said. “I’ve followed the university for a long time and I thought this was an exciting place.”
It is also located, she said, in a city with an extremely rich catalogue of African American history: Rhodes makes note of the Great Migration, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and Harold Washington as being just a few touchstones of the city’s storied African American historical tradition. Having such proximity to what she calls “a real hotbed” of African American media and culture is indispensable to her research. “For someone who does African American Studies,” she said, “it’s a pretty amazing place to be.” Perhaps the driving force in Rhodes’ decision to join UIC, however, was the talent of her future colleagues. “The faculty in African American Studies were key. I knew a number of people in the department, I knew about their work, I knew how amazing they were. I think this department is one of the most exciting and generative departments in the country.”
For Rhodes, becoming head of African American Studies is the ideal position because it allows her to teach as well as to lead and innovate. Fortunately, as both a professor and department head, Rhodes can observe the challenges today’s college students face firsthand, and then tailor the curriculum to optimize learning. “Student bodies have changed over time: their needs, their interests, how they learn, all those things have shifted,” Rhodes said. “And I do not want to engage with that only abstractly, I want to be with them, in the classrooms.” Rhodes believes the core tenets of African American Studies teach students the communicative and analytical skills needed to be “productive citizens.” “Understanding the history and politics of race in America is vital to careers in law, healthcare, public service, the arts, and virtually every other profession,” she added.
Jane Rhodes
One of Rhodes’ goals is to make the department a space for public discussion and interdisciplinary content, an undertaking that has produced events such as the recent panel discussion of the hit FOX drama series Empire. The program attracted a standing-room only crowd and Rhodes was interviewed on local radio and television to explain what academics can contribute to discussions of popular culture. In the spring of 2016, the department will host the Grace Holt Symposium (an endowed lectureship in African American Studies); this year’s focus will be on Chicago’s black communities and the struggle over educational access. Other events in the works are a discussion about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans, and a continuation of the Black Lives Matter lecture series that began last year with acclaimed poet Claudia Rankine.
Rhodes believes that alumni of the department and College as a whole are “critical” to supporting the department’s mission of exploring the social and economic issues and political processes that have shaped the African American experience in the United States. One of her main priorities for the department is to reach out to alumni and to get to know them because “there’s this amazing community of folks who studied in this department, who majored and minored in this department, who went on to do important things in the world. And I want to bring them back so they can see who we are now and feel connection and pride with the new African American Studies department at UIC. And I think they can help us get the message out,” Rhodes concluded. To this end, the department has launched a new social media initiative to provide access to the world of African American Studies on multiple platforms. “We are particularly excited about making ourselves more visible to all of our constituencies,” said Rhodes. “I hope people will check out our updated Facebook page as well as our new Tumblr and Instagram pages.”
Perhaps above all else, Rhodes wants students and engaged alumni to understand one thing: that the department is uniquely situated and equipped to be a space for public discussion about complex social and political issues. If students take full advantage of this, they will be prepared to grapple with important contemporary issues such as police violence in black communities, the legislative struggle over the Voting Rights Act, or the educational achievement gap. Rhodes believes that the African American Studies department at UIC is a place where students can indulge their intellectual curiosity and push themselves outside their comfort zone: “This is your chance.”
To find out more about the African American Studies department and ways to get involved, please visitaast.uic.edu, uicaast.tumblr.com, instagram.com/uicaast, or fb.com/uicaast.
To learn about how to support African American Studies’ programs and students, please contact Katherine Veach, Assistant Dean for Advancement, at 312.413.3469 or katveach@uic.edu.
THIS ISSUE
- Message from the Dean
- Message from the Assistant Dean
for Advancement - The Power of LAS Scholarships
- WISE Women
- Finish Line Fund Targets Student Success
- Leading and Innovating
- The Philosophy of Time and Space
- You Can Get There from Here
- My Fulbright Studies in Polish History
- Celebrating LAS
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College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 601 South Morgan Street (MC 228) Chicago, Illinois 60607
Tel: (312) 413-2500 | Fax: (312) 413-2511 Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
All rights reserved. Complete credits.
Tel: (312) 413-2500 | Fax: (312) 413-2511 Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
All rights reserved. Complete credits.
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Monday, May 13, 2019
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Film: Arrow and Oil
Lanyue Zhang
Film: Arrow and Oil
Composer: George Oldziey
Logline: Around 1010 A.D. during the Northern Song Dynasty, Chen YaoZi, a civil officer from the imperial court with superb archery skills starts questioning the relationship between his archery and his work after he meets an old oil seller.
What has it been like to work with your composer?
We did a spotting session at our first meeting, and I gave George some references. He did two versions of music, then my co-director (Majik Jingwei Zhou) and I gave him some notes. He changed some parts, and although we had some different ideas, we accepted each other idea in the end.
What have you learned in this process?
We learned how to communicate with our composer. To make sure our composer can get our story, we let him watch our film and talk about his first idea, then we explained our story and the metaphor in our film. I learned communication is very important in this process. On the other hand, because this is a festival event, we didn’t hire him as our composer. Our collaboration is not like the normal process between director and composer, so we gave George more freedom to do the music.
What are you specifically looking forward to in the live screening?
We are looking forward to bringing our crew to the festival, and also we are looking forward to the live performances.
Saturday, May 11, 2019
DRONE JOURNALISM
In short
Drones offer interesting perspectives for journalism. Drones equipped with cameras can take photos and videos from an aerial perspective, reaching inaccessible places or offering breathtaking footage. Still, journalists might hesitate to use drones for their work, because there are too many issues and unclear regulations.
This white paper will shed light on the disruptive impacts and implications of drone use on journalism as a business, as a practice and as an institution.
The paper starts with a short history of drone journalism, including the major kinds of drones available and their key features. Then, the key technical and business opportunities and challenges are outlined. Next, pro and contra arguments towards drone journalism will allow a better understanding of the controversy among media professionals, academics, lawmakers, authorities and the civil society. The main points are:
- Especially for geographic and war reporting, drones offer unprecedented access in combination with safety for a journalist’s body.
- Drones are relatively inexpensive gadgets inviting experimentation, but expert use requires training and experience.
- Citizens and policymakers remain skeptical towards drone use. Privacy violations, conflicts with authorities, or damages need to be kept in a drone journalist’s mind.
- The decision to invest in drone journalism should be guided by your editorial policy and the news themes your newsroom is prioritizing.
Next, we discuss the positive and negative outcomes of drone journalism. There is clearly a potential in the use of drones to cover situations that are dangerous or inaccessible for journalists, at a relatively low cost. On the other hand, there is no control on that access (e.g. no press card for drones) and a general drone use can foster surveillance culture.
We conclude that drone journalism will be a niche in the evolving news environment and outline different scenarios for different newsrooms, showing how:
- large media might choose to engage for cost-cutting reasons,
- average media should only invest when aligned with their editorial policy,
- freelancers could develop a successful specialty in drone journalism.
A birds’ eye on Drone Journalism
Drones are also known as “unmanned aerial systems (UAS)” or “remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS)”. Drones equipped with cameras can take photos and videos from an aerial perspective, that can be integrated into everyday news coverage. Reporters can either directly integrate the material into their online or TV news outlets, or they can indirectly make use of the materials as a source to feed their stories (especially in ethically critical cases).
It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s a drone
The first actor who used drones was the military that applied highly equipped aircraft for surveillance and attacks, e.g. the infamous RQ-9B “Predator”. However, commercial use of drones kicked off when software companies and engineers started constructing small, light-weight drones that were easy to control. At the same time, tiny but powerful cameras (like GoPro cameras) were produced and became cheaper. The major shift came when the industry discovered the commercial market of camera-equipped drones. Drone producers like Parrot or MikroKopter sell drones at affordable prices.
Since a couple of years, there are a lot more drone producing enterprises like DJI, Yuneec, Syma, Tekk, etc. competing on the commercial market. The market predictions from PricewaterhouseCoopers indicate tremendous future potentials of the commercial drone market: They prognosticate investments of 8.8 billion dollars until 2020 for the media and entertainment market.
There exist several types of drones, each with different advantages and difficulties:
While the rotor drones are more applicable for immediate purposes such as protest coverage, the fixed-wing drones can be helpful in geographic reporting of natural disasters, nuclear accidental areas, or war zones.
A short history of Drone Journalism
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln established a Drone Journalism Lab in November 2011 aimed to make journalism more digital and innovative. In the lab, they build drone platforms for the use in the field. Their research focuses on ethical, legal and regulatory issues involved in using remotely piloted aircraft to do journalism. In the same year, the Professional Society of Drone Journalism was founded, an international organization dedicated to establishing a framework for the emerging field of drone journalism.
However in 2013, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wrote a letter to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln drone program urging them to stop flying until the program obtains a Certificate of Authorization. After three years of waiting, the FAA published a new “small unmanned aircraft rule (part 107)” defining the circumstances allowing the use of drones for civil or commercial purposes. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the new rules would simplify the incorporation of drone footage into everyday journalistic work. The event illustrates the regulatory tensions surrounding drone journalism.
Drone Regulations
Inthe European Union, the legal regulation of civil drone use is still in the works, even though national regulations exist. In Germany for example, drone regulation is the responsibility of the federal states. According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure is working on a new regulation for civil drone use on a national level, which includes an obligatory license tag for drones weighing more than 250g as well as a license for the pilot.
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published the small unmanned aircraft rule in 2016: a commercial drone must be light-weight (less than 25 kg) and has to stay in visual line-of-sight of the pilot at all times. Drones may not operate over any persons not directly participating in the operation and not under a covered structure. Moreover, only daylight operations are allowed, and a drone must give the right of way to all other aircraft. Remote pilots require an airman certification with a small unmanned aerial systems rating by passing an FAA aeronautical knowledge test. For the registration, one has to be at least 16 years old.
“Under this regulatory framework, every newsroom will have drones and people certified to fly them. They’ll just be part of the equipment.” , says Matt Waite, founder of the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska.
Drones are allowed to reach the maximum ground speed of 100 mph or 161 km/h, and a maximum altitude of 400 feet or 122 m above ground level. Pilots have to ensure the minimum weather visibility of 3 miles (4.8 km) from the control station. Before the flight, an inspection by the remote pilot in command is required.
Why journalists should care about Drone Journalism?
The functionalities of drones are potentially relevant for news professionals. They provide various advantages for news-gathering such as aerial reporting and access to places. Moreover, drones became smarter and more affordable over the last decade.
Drones make aerial reporting accessible to all
Drones offer unprecedented possibilities to journalists. One the one hand, drone journalism dramatically increases the frequency of aerial reporting. According to Rick Shaw of the Missouri Drone Journalism Program, for media companies that use a news helicopter, the change to drone journalism would be much more cost-efficient.
Before we had to hire a pilot, rent the airplane, and you were looking at $200 or $300 minimum for an hour to go up, and many times the pilots had a minimum of two or three hours. […] Now for that same cost, you can purchase a small unmanned aircraft, get someone on your staff trained, and use it repeatedly for a number of things. (reported by Columbia Journalism Review)
Once only wealthy media companies could afford a helicopter and a pilot for aerial reporting, now drones are cheap to buy and to operate and allow smaller media companies and freelancing journalists to cover aerial perspectives. Due to new technologies, the production of high definition or 3D images can be directly used for video news or live reporting, which makes media production more time-efficient.
On the other hand, by using drones, journalists can reach dangerous or otherwise inaccessible areas, providing information and fact-checks to the public.
In January 2015, both the Russian-backed rebels and the [sic] Ukraine claimed control over Donetsk Airport, which is battleground since the start of the conflict. At that moment, the fundraising collective for the Ukrainian army “Army SOS” posted a drone footage of the destroyed airport on Youtube. The video was spread by Vice and Mashable and went viral. From this footage, the Professional Society of Drone Journalists (PSDJ) mapped the area and compared the images to publicly available satellite images, creating a low-resolution 3D model of the airport. (reported by DutchNewsDesign.com)
Drone journalism offers a novel user experience
Drone journalism provides various business opportunities. Video content gathered by drones provides a novel consumer experience in terms of aesthetics, proximity, and oversight. This can either be used for extraordinary marketing campaigns via TV or social media channels, or it can be sold directly on news websites.
Still searching for online niches and profitable business models, media companies could create revenue in the niche of specialized drone journalism. For example in sports reporting, drone journalism offers totally new perspectives. In the future, this field might be covered by only a few players on the market — probably these will either be new start-ups, or big, global media companies.
“The newspaper was still for images but the Internet is for this”, says Lewis Whyld, a British photographer.
Furthermore, geographic coverage will become cheaper and more widespread, allowing also local news media on a tight budget to cover stories with large spatial applications, such as a forest fire or flooding.
“Lewis Whyld, a British journalist who has been building drones in his living room for years, went to the Philippines to capture the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan. In its deadly push through the country, the tropical cyclone had ripped houses and villages apart, burying people under rubble, and scattering large-scale detritus across the landscape. Using his drone, Whyld was able to fly over impassable roads and get to places others couldn’t. ‘I was finding dead bodies in areas the authorities couldn’t access,’ says Whyld, 36. ‘It’s not just about beautiful aerial shots. When covering the typhoon, it was accessing areas you couldn’t access on foot.’” (reported by The New York Times)
Albeit, before newsrooms can profit from drone journalism they need to invest in training and licensing their drone journalists.
Key challenges
Practical Implications
With the drones, several completely new journalistic profiles will enter the journalistic workplace. Depending on the type of the drone, these jobs will be done by one or more persons. In a newsroom, it also needs to be clarified who will be responsible for the drone specific tasks:
- Who decides which topics will be covered by a drone and which will not?
- Who is responsible for the functioning and maintenance of it?
- Who will be responsible in case of legal issues caused by drone use?
- Who edits the great amounts of photo or video material? …
However, in the precarious working environment journalists face right now, it needs to be considered that additional tasks for journalist will increase their workload even more. Facing legal issues like privacy and damages, drone use requires a high sense of responsibility from the remote pilot.
As mentioned above, drones provide the opportunity for self-employed journalists or freelancers to come up with an own start-up. Since there are small and inexpensive drones that can be handled by one person, they can easily create their own media website or sell their videos to major media companies in an entrepreneurial manner. However, becoming a drone journalist is coupled with time and money, which freelancing journalists should keep in mind when estimating their workload.
In 2011, the Polish drone producer RoboKopter flew one of their drones over the chaotic Independence Day protests in Warsaw. The confrontations among Polish nationalists, left-wing activists and the police have been recorded from aerial view. The drone created impressive cinema-like pictures in a spectacular aerial perspective. However, in the U.S. Occupy Wall Street protests, this would not have been feasible, since the police was closing the airspace over the event. Consequently, the recorded images from the Occupy protest had to be made in a traditional hand-held way. (reported by the blogger Robert Mackey)
Institutional Implications
Onthe one hand, the media function as a watchdog is reinforced since journalists can make use of a powerful new observation tool. Especially investigative journalism could evolve. Drones could be used to record illegal activities, environmental pollution on private land, black market activities, or unhygienic agricultural conditions.
On the other hand, there are various new possibilities for citizen journalism. Today, citizens report photos and videos taken with their smartphones on their social media channels. Tomorrow, they could share their drone recorded materials and participate in news coverage. However, ethical principles for the integration of drone footage need to be specified.
PRO & CONTRA DRONE JOURNALISM
Generally, it can be stated that media academics, journalists and media organizations are quite enthusiastic about drone use for journalistic purposes. In contrast, civil rights organizations, lawmakers, and the civil society remain rather skeptical about it and worry about privacy and physical injury.
Drone Enthusiasm
Journalists and news professionals tend to be enthusiastic about the possibilities of drone journalism. Already in 2011, the New York Times titled “Drone Journalism arrives”. In 2012, the Knight Foundation spend a 50,000 $ grant to Matt Waite, who founded the Drone Journalism Lab. The goal was to do research and experimentation into the use of drone vehicles as news and information-gathering tools, to study the ethics of these techniques and to publish case studies and best-practices guides.
In 2014, Journalism.co.uk predicted robots and video capture drones to be technology trends that “journalists should watch”. In 2015, ten news media companies have partnered with Virginia Tech for the testing of small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to gather news. Virginia Tech would have seen this collaboration as a key to fundamental research to use UAS for the news and broadcasting industry on a routine basis.
Browsing through the internet, you will find many extraordinary photos and videos taken by drones. The Time Magazine, for example, was just recently celebrating the “new perspective on the world” in an article which contained the best drone shots from 2016.
In December 2016, Chinese English-language newspaper China Daily signed a contract with a domestic drone producerto enrich their digital news coverage on a routine basis.
According to the Drone Journalism Lab, drones would be the ideal platform for journalism for two reasons:
- “a growing appetite for unique online video in an environment of decreased budgets” and
- “restricted or obstructed access to stories”.
Drone fear
But not all media professionals are enthusiastic towards the emerging drone use in journalism. The editor John A. Moore elaborated his doubts towards daily drone use in journalism. According to him, one of the central questions would be how many news media drones should be allowed by the authorities to cover an event. A limitation of several or dozens would be hard to implement since drones could not easily present their press pass like journalists would do. But without a press pass, it would be impossible to distinguish amateur drone pilots from drone journalists.
Steve Coll, who is the dean of the Journalism School at Columbia University, has frequently written about the technology and its military applications. For him, drones are objects that would capture people’s anxieties and imagination. He stresses in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, that before using a flying camera, journalists should ask themselves: “What can you use a drone for, that you can’t achieve by other means, that really matters, that is in the public interest, and is not just for the sake of doing it?”
But just because you can use a drone, doesn’t mean you should use a drone.
Furthermore, there are several legal issues. Privacy issues will occur when people who expected to be private (e.g. on a balcony) are filmed by a press drone. Google has responded to a similar problem with their maps service by blurring people’s faces. Yet, it remains unclear how such a method could be implemented in video data in a daily news routine. Violations of privacy and property rights will cause both ethical and legal implications.
Additionally, the Rutherford Institute, which is dedicated to the defense of civil liberties and human rights, warns the threats to Americans’ safety and privacy posed by the domestic use of drones. Equally, lawmakers worry about privacy rights. In a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration, two senior lawmakers wrote that drones would be powerful surveillance instrumentswithout adequate privacy protections.
Moreover, drones are not very popular among citizens. According to a representative Associated Press-GfK poll among the American citizens from 2014, almost half of the respondents (43 %) say they “strongly oppose” or “somewhat oppose” the commercial use of drones. Whereas 35 % neither favor nor oppose, and only 21 % of the respondents favor commercial drone use. Three quarters state to be moderately to extremely concerned about the danger that drones pose towards aircraft and towards people on the ground. 86 % of the respondents stated to be concerned with privacy.
The drone journalism professor Matt Waite discusses these ethical question with his students. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, he claims that journalists have to start thinking about the impact of drones: are they harassing or distracting? Do they cause panic? Are drone journalists harming people psychologically or needlessly invading their privacy?
Regarding the above-mentioned new FAA rule, the Poynter Institute remains skeptical. They do not see how the legal certificate would be sufficient to handle drones professionally and worry about a few experienced remote pilots doing journalism.
Finding a reasonable solution
According to the Reuters Institute Report on RPAS, journalistic drone use would certainly create conflicts with law enforcement and emergency services. But they add that this kind of conflicts would have previously existed for media helicopters and live broadcasts. Moreover, they warn for too much optimism related to drones in war zones. The drone’s radio signal could be tracked and the journalist could be targeted and harmed.
Thomas Hannen from the BBC sees the advantages of drones but concludes that the BBC does not “see them as a replacement for a news helicopter” — as the Guardian reported.
Final notes: being ready for take-off
All journalists and media professionals should keep in mind the skepticism of the population and lawmakers towards drone use. Especially regarding their audiences, journalists have to consider carefully if the new way of reporting and overcoming barriers equals a possible loss of journalistic credibility caused by privacy violations, conflicts with authorities, or damages.
However, you can benefit from a bird’s view on the world which allows increased access, potential new revenues and markets, unprecedented geographic and war reporting and safety for a journalist’s body. Another key point is that, in exchange for all the advantages they provide, drones are relatively inexpensive gadgets.
For media organizations, it is a rather strategic decision whether to invest in drone journalism or not. Large media corporations that already use a news helicopter should definitely take a look on the resources they can save if they invest in drones. Important in that case is to take into account the amount of training their journalists need before being professional drone journalists.
Average or small media companies should only invest in drone journalism if it benefits their journalist working on investigative, war, sports, and geographic reporting. If your team rarely works in these fields, it might be better not to invest in drone journalism, unless, they want to broaden their coverage into these fields.
Freelancers who decide to go for drone journalism could succeed as a highly specialized media worker with their own enterprise in an emerging business. But in a precarious working environment, they should consider being exploited by major media. As a consequence, their situation could worsen, since self-employed journalists carry the financial risks of the purchase and training alone.
As described above, drone journalism will be a niche in the evolving news environment. Drone recorded materials will probably be bought and sold a lot since economically, it is more cost-efficient for small and average media companies. Probably, they will rather buy professional drone shots and videos than invest in their own drone journalist. As a start-up or as a big player the in media business, however, investing in drone journalism to fill this niche might be fruitful. After all, when it comes to drone journalism, the sky is the limit.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
Bal, H. M., & Baruh, L. (2015). Citizen Involvement In Emergency Reporting: A Study On Witnessing And Citizen Journalism. Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 6(2), 213–231.
Cohen, N. S. (2015). Entrepreneurial Journalism and the Precarious State of Media Work. South Atlantic Quarterly, 114(3), 513–533.
Cook, C., & Sirkkunen, E. (2013). What’s in a Niche? Exploring The Business Model of Online Journalism. Journal of Media Business Studies, 10(4), 63–82.
Moore, J. A. (2014). Robot vs. Human. Columbia Journalism Review, 53(2), 6.
Picard, R. G. (2014). Twilight or New Dawn of Journalism? Digital Journalism, 2(3), 273–283.
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