Abstract:  Drones are shaping journalism in a variety of ways including in the production of immersive news content. This article identifies, describes and analyzes, or maps out, four areas in which drones are impacting immersive news content. These include: 1) enabling the possibility of providing aerial perspective for first-person perspective flight-based immersive journalism experiences; 2) providing geo-tagged audio and video for flight-based immersive news content; 3) providing the capacity for both volumetric and 360 video capture; and 4) generating novel content types or content based on data acquired from a broad range of sensors beyond the standard visible light captured via video cameras; these may be a central generator of unique experiential media content beyond visual flight-based news content.

Keywords:  augmented reality; drones; journalism; photogrammetry; virtual reality; volumetric

Published:   27 July 2020

Issue:   Vol 8, No 3 (2020): Journalism from Above: Drones, the Media, and the Transformation of Journalistic Practice