In November 2011, Polish firm RoboKopter filmed striking images of a political demonstration in Warsaw using a video camera attached to a drone or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

The New York Times heralded the footage as signalling the arrival of ‘drone journalism’. Since then, we haven’t seen many newsgathering drones in UK skies, but we might well be seeing them some time soon.

Drones have been receiving more attention in recent months usually in the context of military operations. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has been tracking the controversial use of drone strikes by the US military in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Africa. It has also emerged that the RAF were flying US drones during the conflict in Libya last year.

But much smaller UAVs – whether fixed wing or rotary – are now being used in civilian settings not for targeted killing but for image gathering. Last week, BBC Newsnight explored some of the issues around civilian drones and earlier in the year, Al Jazeera English filmed a training exercise with the German fire brigade which showed how UAVs could support firefighting.

I understand that several media organisations in the UK have already started to explore how they could use UAVs for newsgathering.

UAVs for Aerial Newsgathering

Aerial footage is not new of course, but UAVs are much smaller than helicopters allowing them to provide imagery from previously inaccessible locations.

The fact that they are unmanned also means there is no risk to a journalist or pilot. The latest models are being equipped with high definition technology allowing them to potentially provide stunning footage of national celebrations, political protest, natural disasters and conflict.

Safety, legality and ethics

The use of UAVs for newsgathering nevertheless raises a host of practical, legal and ethical issues. Question marks remain over safety concerns and the reliability of the technology, although the UAV industry is developing features such as an automatic ‘return to base’ function if the battery runs out or the operator loses control.

Legally, there is already a fairly well-established regulatory framework in place in the UK for flying UAVs which is outlined in guidance issued by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

But this is an evolving area. The CAA’s chapter on ‘Civil Operations, Approval to Operate [UAVs]’ was completely rewritten in the latest guidance for August 2012. The requirements for ‘the licensing and training of United Kingdom civil Remote Pilots have not yet been fully developed’ and there is no European-wide standard to test UAV pilot competency.

It is likely that larger media organisations will look to fully licensed and CAA approved UAV operators to provide them with a newsgathering capability or apply for their own licenses to operate UAVs. But there is no particular reason why smaller organisations or individual ‘citizen’ ‘drone’ ‘journalists’ couldn’t do the latter and attempt to gather their own footage.

Gizmodo recently featured the (intriguingly named) Spy Hawk RC Glider which allows you to record video from the sky for a mere £250. With a battery life of 15 minutes it’s unlikely to have any heavyweight journalistic applications but we can expect the cost of more sophisticated equipment to come down.

Ethically, UAVs are likely to compound longstanding editorial dilemmas. It is not hard to imagine scenarios in which the deployment of UAVs for newsgathering is likely to directly invade individuals’ privacy or indirectly facilitate ‘collateral intrusion’.

These concerns might need to be balanced against a ‘public interest’ defence in a situation where it is deemed that the footage reveals serious wrongdoing.

News organisations might then face requests from other organisations for access to video footage. Only last year, the Metropolitan Police asked UK media organisations to handover footage of the London riots, but the police have already been exploring the deployment of their own UAVs and are likely to continue to do so in the future.

Indeed, in a rather strange – but perhaps not unrealistic vision of the future – it is possible to envisage a stand off between a fleet of media-operated UAVs and their police counterparts at the site of a protest or emergency. Newsgathering sorties might have to be coordinated or argued over with ‘rival’ UAV operators or interested parties.

Another possible scenario which raises some profound questions is the use of UAVs in the context of conflict. What would happen if a news organisation flew a UAV from Jordan over the border into Syria? Will opposition activists of the future be streaming live video footage to YouTube shot with UAVs?

Newsgathering UAVs coming soon?

Until now, these have been hypothetical debates set out in ‘future scenarios’ by interested thinkers and there has not been much visible evidence of UAVs being deployed by media organisations in the UK.

But recently I’ve been in contact with several people from the media and UAV industries. Behind the scenes discussions are taking place about UAVs for newsgathering and I think we can expect to see major developments in this area within a year and perhaps even by the end of 2012.

It would not be a surprise to see UAV footage being played out on air in the near future and maybe we’ll run into some of these other issues before too long as well. So watch this space – the one just above your head.

Last Thursday, the Navy awarded a new contract to five intelligence, computer and security companies to provide both hardware and "the development, integration, and test of intelligence, battlespace awareness, and information operations applications".

In other words, the US Navy is embarking on a major new project in the area of surveillance, technology and data acquisition to provide military commanders with a detailed understanding of any conflict area.

According to the Department of Defense's own definition "battlespace awareness" includes an area's "environment, factors, and conditions", "the status of friendly and adversary forces, neutrals and noncombatants" and "weather and terrain."

The addition of "information operations" in the contract suggests the project will go beyond the remit of geospatial intelligence and may have some capability for commanders to organise messaging campaigns in an attempt to influence various actors in an area of operations.

The contract raises questions over exactly what information the US Navy is intending to collect and in which conflict areas. 

The investment can be understood in the context of the influence of 'network-centric warfare' on US military thinking which emphasises the value of a digitally connected force as a means of improving situational awareness and military decisions.

A press release earlier in the year from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) calling for 'big data' projects noted that:

"the demands for actionable information have spiked as warfighters at every level—whether at the planning table or on patrol—are called upon to make well-informed decisions".

The battlespace awareness contract was awarded by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center and will initially last until August 2013. The US Navy has options in the contract to extend the work to 2017. 

The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center reports directly to the Navy's Information Dominance Systems Command.

When you think of Somalia, what comes to mind?

Conflict? Pirates? Refugees? Poverty?

On the one hand, Breivik is gaining another bout of publicity for his crimes.

On the other, the journalist’s role is to document a trial which inevitably has attracted significant public attention.

Although Twitter’s use in court is not new, this is a particularly high profile case which also presents a wealth of potential ethical issues for journalists using the microblogging tool to cover the trial.

I have a new article up at Index on Censorship which explores some of the issues.

Head over there to read more. 

Data is the future, if it's not already the present.

Whatever else you think about it (and a lot of people have a lot of thoughts), the campaign has succeeded in raising awareness of the crimes of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony.

I just thought I'd take the opportunity to flag up this visualisation by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute tracking the spread of the campaign on a number of related Kony hashtags on Twitter during March:

Mark Graham at the OII concludes:

"#Kony's moment of visibility was both brief and largely transatlantic. This Western-centric pattern of information flow is not necessarily surprising and can be found on many other online platforms. However, given the video's relevance to East Africa, and the global diffusion of Twitter (e.g. Indonesians form the world's 6th largest population of Twitter users), we might have expected #Kony to have a slightly less clustered geography."

Worth checking out the original post on the Zero Geography blog at the OII for more details.

Questions have been asked on topics ranging from the Taliban's negotiations with the United States to their position on educating girls.

The Taliban banned girls from schools while they were in power, although there were reports in January 2011 that they had ended their opposition to education for women.

The number of girls in school has risen to 2.5 million since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, according to the government and aid groups.

The questions on the forum are being answered by Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, who blamed a lack of funding for girls' schools that were run in accordance with Islamic tenets.

In response to another question, he indicated that the Taliban monitors Facebook, YouTube and media reports. 

"An extraordinary time to be a journalist"

All the panellists expressed their excitement at covering the Arab Spring. Tom Coghlan began by comparing the limitations on his reporting from Afghanistan over the last four years with the "fabulously unrestricted" nature of his reporting from Libya.

Covering the conflict from the perspective of the rebels, Coghlan noted that it was "completely chaotic" and journalists were welcomed by Libyans who were keen to tell their stories to the world. 

He said it was a "fantastically optimistic" story to cover with "ordinary people" doing "extraordinary things". 

Lindsey Hilsum described 2011 as "the reason" she "went into journalism". She said it was amazing to have access as a journalist to what was happening at Tahrir Square and the aftermath of Gaddafi's departure from Tripoli.

In Libya, she said journalists benefited from the fact that battles took place on main roads - journalists could drive up, film the story and then retreat from the front line to file.   

Hilsum believed that for all the dangers and risks of reporting the Arab Spring, her generation of reporters have been "very privileged". 

Lyse Doucet agreed: it is "an extraordinary time to be a journalist". But she observed that the story of the Arab Spring, which began with great "excitement and euphoria" was now entering a new stage.

She said that there were parts of the story that were causing "awe and anguish" as the 'revolutions' faced opposition and challenges in the aftermath. 

Reporting Syria

In particular, there was concern on the panel for what was happening in Syria.

Tom Coghlan described his six days reporting from there as exceptionally unpleasant and said the risks that Syrians were taking meant he had not been able to report a single name of anyone he had interviewed.

He revealed that The Times would now only send journalists into Syria with bodyguards.

The role of "citizen journalists" and "activists" in accessing the story from Syria was also discussed.

Coghlan was impressed by the innovative and clever use of online tools by activists, while Lindsey Hilsum said news organisations are developing increasingly sophisticated techniques to verify video material coming out of the country.

Interestingly, an example Hilsum gave of trying to verify a video from the Free Syrian Army included an appeal to Twitter users to see what they made of the footage - effectively crowdsourcing part of the verification process to a networked audience. (Although it should be noted that this was just one of several verification strategies.)    

Nevertheless, prompted by a question from the chair Richard Sambrook, the panel emphasised the importance of "objective", independent reporting and "bearing witness".

Lindsey Hilsum said it was difficult for governments outside of Syria to formulate a policy towards the country, but she argued that it would be even harder if journalists were not going there to gather news and information.

The video is a year old, but I've been looking for this sort of material for a while.

The IDF started with a blog and a YouTube channel in 2008 during Operation Cast Lead which included airstrikes and a ground incursion into Gaza. The IDF began a Twitter account several days into 2009.

I was critical then, but it looks like things have come a long way since that hastily conceived project.

WE-NATO also wants to livestream a series of talks and conduct video interviews in the run up to the NATO summit in Chicago in May.

Unfortunately it's not really started off too well. First, we have the launch announcement from "Deputy Assistant Secretary of Pubic Diplomacy". (Yep, that's NATO's "pubic"...)

Which consists of a fairly dull YouTube video:

I'm sure Dr. Stefanie Babst has lots of interesting things to say about what NATO does but I'm afraid after she tells me I'm in the "right place" to follow global issues, I just feel like actually I'm in the wrong place. A shame.

Then on the About page we have an impassioned plea for YOUR contributions. (Yep, that's NATO's excitable capitals): 

"WE-NATO is an interactive platform, which will enable YOU to engage directly with other netizens around the world in an open and transparent dialogue on issues related to NATO’s current agenda.

"This site is not a one way communication talk-shop, but a forum where YOU contribute...

"WE also want to listen to YOUR views and comments and WE want to share with YOU our thinking on a range of security issues some of which you may not be familiar with.

"Join the discussion. Join the debate and WE look forward hearing from YOU!"

Brilliantly, we are then informed that "comments are closed".

To be fair, you can comment on the launch announcement page, other pages and a plethora of NATO's other social media sites. No doubt somebody will reply to you there. 

There is more background on the WE-NATO project in a slightly more interesting YouTube video on WE-Magazine.net.

Here an unidentified woman informs us that "NATO itself, in its organisational structure, is not ready yet for what Web 2.0 is actually asking from the institution".

Hmm...that maybe says it all.

P.S. In a bonus irony, you can't currently comment on this blog despite my occasional pestering of the good people at the Frontline Club...but YOU (sorry, couldn't resist) can drop me a line on Twitter.     

Colvin and Ochlik died the day after Syrian activist, Rami al-Sayed. His video footage, uploaded to YouTube and Bambuser, was used by the world's media to report what was happening in Homs.

It is a sad day for journalism - "old", "new" and what they have become together.  

In Colvin's last report for the newspaper on Sunday, she had described the desperation of the brutal government assault on Homs, part of a crackdown which has claimed the lives of an estimated 5,400 Syrians since March 2011.

This is a collection of Colvin's final broadcast interviews and tributes from the world of journalism. 

When people in the media industry talk about "embedded journalists" they usually mean journalists embedding with military units.

It is, of course, possible to 'embed' with other people or organisations and it is perhaps a sign of the times that 'journalists' like Jane Ferguson are now embedding with 'citizen journalists'. 

Although in many ways, this is just an evolution of the journalist's all important relationship with local fixers who make so much journalism possible. It's just these days the fixers are documenting and publishing their own material as well.

Many 'fixers' from conflicts past undoubtedly deserved the title of 'journalist' as well, but in the 21st century it seems even more relevant that these citizens are recognised for the journalism they produce. 

I've spoken to him previously for the Frontline Club about his Frontline bloggers project. 

In this interview with David Bailey, Maj. Smyth talks in some detail about how he used social media to tell the story of British military deployments from Kosovo to Afghanistan. 

These are a few of the things that caught my eye (after I'd spent a few moments puzzling over the indoor brick wall):

1. In Kosovo, Maj. Smyth began making 2 minute YouTube videos and sending the URLs to journalists in Sarajevo to try to capture their interest. Putting these videos online meant they could also be viewed by military wives, girlfriends and families in the UK.

2. He says that in order to get coverage in national newspapers or on the BBC, he needed an "incredible story". But a blog allowed him to provide "behind the scenes" footage and to publish smaller stories for interested audiences on a regular basis.   

3. He targeted influential defence correspondents and outlets such as CNN's i-Report spreading his news "footprint over a wider area".  

4. He describes how his blogging team inadvertently trumped the established news procedures of Buckingham Palace and the MoD Press Office.

The team had published a blog post revealing a visit by Princess Anne to Camp Bastion an hour too early. He claims the subsequent coverage of the post on the BBC and in The Times and The Telegraph "surprised a few people".