bestow the media industry and the challenges that it must face in order to become fully incorporated into news production processes.

However, the fact that drone journalism is still in its infancy means that theoretical studies and academic research in this regard are still thin on the ground. Accordingly, the bibliographic review was supplemented here with newspaper archives and statistical reports on the media industry and the use of drones.

We also conducted a series of in-depth, open-ended and targeted interviews with professionals working in the sector, for the purpose of enriching the theoretical framework with testimonies of media and production companies and ascertaining whether there is any truth in the claims of theoreticians as regards the barriers to the use of drones in the media industry and the opportunities that this technology can afford journalism as a whole. In light of the result of an initial survey that allowed us to verify that the major TV broadcasting companies in Spain do not own their own drones, we also decided to interview the managers of production companies that provide television channels with these services.

Lastly, we reviewed the legislation on drones to analyse the legal framework governing their professional use in Spain, including the new regulations established by Royal Decree 1036/2017, of 15 September 2017, on the civil use of aircraft piloted by remote control (BOE, Friday, 29 December 2017).

3. The origins of drones

3.1. The flight of the drone

When drones began to be used in journalism during the first decade of the twenty-first century, they had already been employed for military purposes for over 70 years. Nevertheless, the drone concept can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century, when Austria launched an attack against Venice using hot air balloons loaded with explosives (Muy Interesante, 2014). And by the end of the century, the inventor Tesla had already predicted the advent of remote-controlled military vehicles and the broad range of possibilities opened up by radio control technology, as can be glimpsed in the patent that he took out in 1898 ‘Method of and apparatus for controlling mechanism of moving vessels or vehicles’. For Tuan Nguyen (2016), Tesla was the true visionary in this regard and, during World War I, the warring parties began to test formulas with a view to fulfilling his prophesies.

However, the term ‘drone’ dates backs to at least 1935, according to the linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer (2013), who recalls how after watching a demonstration of the DH 82B Queen Bee, a new remote-controlled aircraft that the British Royal Navy used for target practice, US Admiral William H. Standley commissioned Commander Delmer Fahrney to develop something similar for the US Navy. And it was Fahrney who adopted the term ‘drone’ to refer to this unmanned aircraft which could be controlled by an operator on land or by a ‘mother’ aircraft.

For his part, Zimmer, who builds upon the theories of the military historian Steven Zaloga, the author of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (2008), claims that during World War II, the US Armed Forces stepped up the production of ‘target’ and ‘assault