Beyond DAPL: Drones as Counter-Narrative Tools in Journalism Practices

In the last decades, the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have turned from military to commercial product, for both professional and personal use. The different applications of UAVs in civil society are the demonstration of how drones have entered into the processes of technological convergence, becoming a physical extension remotely controllable by a mobile device. Even if the issue remains under-investigated in academic literature, lately the interest in drone journalism or dronalism (Goldberg et al., 2013) has increased among scholars. Most of them are quite sure that “unmanned aerial vehicles are soon going to be a natural and ubiquitous part of our lives” (Gynnild A., Usakali T., 2018). Based on these considerations, the aims of this work – in progress paper are to investigate UAVs as potential tools of counter- narrative in journalism practices and to understand how this could affect and/or involve the audience. Starting from the case of study of North Dakota Pipeline (DAPL) (Tuck S., 2018; Rafsky S., 2017), which well exemplifies contradictions and potentials of drone journalism, we would like to go deeper in the debate. More in detail, we would like to understand if the overcoming of spatial barriers could improve a new form of journalistic storytelling, enable different forms of audience engagement, and provide a balancing asset among powers. In order to do so, we will use the theoretical concepts of media as extension (McLuhan, 1964) and of hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2013).