Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper aims to explore how Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), thanks
to its vertical spatiality and movement autonomy which allows the
conjuncture of above and below as a public space (Tuck S., 2018), could
provide materials to enhance a community-based narrative.
The growing use of drones in journalism, or “dronalism” (Goldberg et al.,
2013), brings a new perspective to both the traditional visual coverage of
news and the bottom-up journalistic practices, that rely mostly on mobile
and social media coverage. Indeed, it seems to add further values to the
journalistic storytelling and its advocacy.
Starting from the case of the North Dakota Pipeline (DAPL) (Rafsky S.,
2017), which well exemplifies the contradictions and potentials of drone
journalism, and ending on the case of Dandora dumpsite in Kenya,
we would like to go deeper into the debate by comparing two geographical
areas, two distinguished realities which share some similar
characteristics: social inequalities and environment risks.
More in detail, we would like to explore how this technology could help
communities in providing evidence for counter-narratives, juxtaposing
the journalistic work ‘Digital Smoking Signal’ in Standing Rock with
that one of African SkyCAM, in Nairobi.
As part of an exploratory approach, we can outline two different ways of
using drone technology for empowering community-based narrative,
where the main difference regards the level of involvement of
the journalists in the community cause itself.