DroneHack Journalism: Educating & Inspiring Journalists in the Capacities & Possibilities of Unmanned Aerial Systems

Abstract

The use of drones for journalism or newsgathering has been growing steadily over the past few years. The recent rise of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (also known as drones) as consumer products, along with the increasing civilian applications being developed has sparked interest in people outside the aviation industry – including journalists. Drone journalism as a practice and discipline is still relatively new. However, they offer great journalistic potential. Current practice is based on visual media. Primarily this comprises photographs and video, but virtual reality and spherical (360) video is starting to be explored. However, other non-visual drone payloads offer great potential for sensor and data journalism. DroneHack has been developed as an event to bring those with technological skills and know-how together with those with real-world needs, in order to generate ideas and rapidly prototype the next generation of civilian drone applications. It also provides an opportunity to raise awareness of regulations around drones and their use. This paper describes the DroneHack Journalism event which took place in January 2017 in conjunction with journalism.co.uk and Trinity Mirror in Manchester, United Kingdom. The paper also explains what a DroneHack is, how it was developed as a format and the origins and influences as well as an overview of previous DroneHacks and concludes with some possible directions which future DroneHacks could take.