[Commlist] New Book – Aerial Play: Drone Medium, Mobility, Communication, and Culture

New book

Aerial Play: Drone Medium, Mobility, Communication, and Culture

By Julia M. Hildebrand, (hildebjm /at/ eckerd.edu) <mailto:(hildebjm /at/ eckerd.edu)>

Palgrave Macmillan (Geographies of Media Series)

To purchase a copy: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9789811621949 
<https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9789811621949> (for 20% off, use token 
haxFj8k2bpjyMQE at checkout until Aug 17)

To access the ebook via SpringerLink: 
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-2195-6 
<https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-2195-6>

ABOUT THE BOOK:

This book explores recreational uses of consumer drones from the lenses 
of media ecology, mobile communication, mobilities research, and science 
and technology studies. In this provocative ethnography, Julia M. 
Hildebrand discusses camera drones as mobile media for meaningful play. 
She thus widens perspectives onto the flying camera as foremost unmanned 
aircraft, spying tool, or dangerous toy towards a more comprehensive 
understanding of its potentials.

How should we situate drone practices in recreational spaces? What ways 
of seeing, moving, and being do hobby drones open up? Across chapters 
about drone geography, communication, mobility, visuality, and 
human-machine relations, Aerial Play introduces novel frameworks for 
drone affordances, such as communication on the fly, disembodied 
mobilities, auratic vertical play, and drone-mindedness.

In the mobile companionship with her own drone, Hildebrand contributes 
an innovative “auto-technographic” method for the self-reflective study 
of media and mobility. Ultimately, her grounded and aerial fieldwork 
illuminates new technological, mobile, visual, and social relations in 
everyday spaces.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Ch. 1 Introduction: Powerful Play

Ch. 2 Understanding (with) the Drone

Ch. 3 Situating Hobby Drone Practices

Ch. 4 Communicating on the Fly

Ch. 5 Moving and Not Moving up in the Air

Ch. 6 Seeing Like a Consumer Drone

Ch. 7 Dancing with My Drone

Ch. 8 Conclusion: Open Skies?


ENDORSEMENTS:

“In a short amount of time, drones have become a ubiquitous technology. 
And while scholarly attention has been focused on commercial and 
military contexts, the recreational drone has been relatively 
overlooked. That is, until Aerial Play: Drone Medium, Mobility, 
Communication and Culture. Aerial Play addresses some of the complex 
debates around quotidian surveillance and mundane mobilities and how 
these practices recalibrate how we understand media ecology, mobile 
communication, mobilities research, and science and technology studies. 
Traversing themes such as drone geography, communication, mobility and 
new visualities, Aerial Play also explores how drones can help us 
reinvent our digital methods. Hildebrand’s playful and yet robust 
approach to drones encourages us to rethink the paradigm between media 
and mobility.”

– Larissa Hjorth, RMIT University, Australia

“In Aerial Play, Julia M. Hildebrand provides a serious, scholarly, and 
accessible study of a highly significant new medium that is altering the 
world that we live in, and the way that we view ourselves. Drones are 
not simply toys, they are our future, and this book offers us essential 
aid in understanding this important aspect of our evolving media 
environment. Drawing on the powerful tools made available via the media 
ecology intellectual tradition, combined with a multidisciplinary 
methodology, Hildebrand delivers an analysis that is both rigorous and 
readable, and above all insightful and provocative. Read it, and you 
will never look up at the sky in the same way again!”

– Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA

“Dr. Hildebrand offers no-nonsense and straightforward insights into one 
of the growing niches of drone practices: flying for fun! Written at the 
crossroads of mobilities and media studies, Aerial Play is a must-read 
for students, researchers within media, mobilities, geography, and 
technology studies. Recreational drone flyers may indeed also find it 
useful.”

– Ole B. Jensen, Aalborg University, Denmark

Julia M. Hildebrand is Assistant Professor of Communication at Eckerd 
College. For her work on media, mobility, and drones, she has won 
multiple awards including the Harold A. Innis Award in the Field of 
Media Ecology.
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