A Sky Full of Signal: Aviation Media in the Age of the Drone

Problems of control and communication endemic to powered flight have given rise to a range of media forms, which this article proposes to designate aviation media. Today, the maturation and proliferation of unmanned aircraft or drones is reconfiguring the media technologies, infrastructures, and practices on which pilots have previously relied. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with drone pilots and other airspace users in North Dakota, a US state that has courted the unmanned aircraft industry in a bid for economic diversification, this article describes the mundane forms of media labor that underpin the operation of unmanned systems. It also shows how contemporary efforts to achieve an integrated airspace in which both manned and unmanned aircraft can fly depend on the widespread adoption of transmissive media technologies. This demand defines the current media practices of rural airspace users as impediments to progress. By highlighting the politics of aviation media at a moment when drones are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, this article reveals how changes in what it means to be a pilot hinge on shifting claims about which media matter most.