Consumer drones and communication on the fly. (September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hildebrand, Julia M.
• Other Names: Frith Jordan guest-editor.; Özkul Didem guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Mobile media & communication. Volume 7:Number 3(2019)
• Page Start: 395
• Page End: 411
• Publication Date: 2019-09
• Subjects: camera drone -- consumer drone -- locative media -- media ecology -- mobile communication -- mobile media -- mobilities research; Mobile communication systems -- Periodicals; 384.53
• DOI: 10.1177/2050157919850603
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2050-1579

Abstract

In this article, I discuss camera drones as mobile media that help access, collect, and shape physical, digital, and social spaces. As such, consumer drones afford "communication on the fly" in their medium-specific configuration of aerial navigation, visual production, and networked communication. Drawing on in-depth interviews with drone users and auto-ethnographic drone practices, I first highlight what physical-material conditions the flying camera mediates. An analysis of what digital-intangible formations the sensor medium collects and creates follows, before I turn to the sociospatial relations the buzzing mobile interface can establish and disrupt. I show how these conditions of communication on the fly shape user practices of place-sensing and place-making. Through the lenses of mobile communication research, media ecology, and mobilities studies, I ultimately illuminate how the ambiguous aerial system helps expand our thinking of and with notions of communication on the move.