Abstract:
The present paper seeks to analyse and compare legal constraints regarding the usageof drones within journalism activities in Andean Community countries (Colombia,Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia). The main objective is to understand the actuality of thisactivity in a particular geographic area in order to visualize how this branch of civilaviation has generated specific regulation in those countries. Another goal is to notehow this activity has gained supporters in the past years, specially within newsrooms;on the other hand, this research discusses the ethical implications of “Robot eye-witnessing”, regarding the juxtaposition between freedom of speech and non-controlled surveillance among civilians. To accomplish this, the proposal of some scholars, regarding types of control for thoseaircrafts is reviewed in order to compare this to the current legislation of 4 Andeancountries. T his typification are the standpoint of analysis, based on current civilaviation laws, examples of drone journalism in each country, and finally, a comparisonto US drone regulations, the epitome of countries with civilian uses of drones.Given that this type of journalism can be considered a novel branch of news reporting,some definitions and concepts are collated to determine a framework on dronejournalism, especially in South America. For this, some scholars are addressed fromdifferent areas of knowledge such as Journalism, War Studies, Sociology, ArtificialIntelligence, among others.The main conclusion of this paper is to determine the importance of formal regulations(opposed to natural controls, generic laws, and soft regulatory forms) and its suitabilityto normalise the use of drones for professional purposes. Some other expectation isestablishing a permanent discussion about the use of technology and its influence onthe development of new journalism.
