Julia M. Hildebrand

Roughly ten years ago, a new "mobile medium" entered the public discourse: the consumer drone. Since then, the technology has entered private, public and commercial spaces beyond its military ties. Yet questions remain about how consumer drones impact users, reconfigure adjacent technologies such as the smartphone and influence contemporary visual culture along with emerging socio-technical environments such as the internet of things. To explore these questions, I draw on data from ethnographic and auto-technographic fieldwork, semi-structured user interviews and ongoing socio-cultural trends and developments. The chapter's goal is to further unpack such human-machine entanglements in civilian drone contexts. Moreover, research into them can open up provocative intellectual avenues for mobile media and the future of mediated communication more generally.

Generative artificial intelligence services (such as ChatGPT, Claude.ai, and DeepSeek) are rapidly entering the classroom, offering both opportunities and challenges for students and educators. While AI can support personalized learning and efficiency, it also raises important questions about critical thinking and academic integrity in education. In this talk, I highlight some of the benefits and risks of AI as a teaching tool as well as a subject of study in the media and communication classroom.