## 7 Conclusions  
Drones are very useful in hostile or hazardous environments where the human approach is considered dangerous and unsafe or when ground coverage is not feasible; there is also the \"disposable drone scenario\", where it is expected that UAVs might not return to the land zone. Besides the aims of healthier and less dangerous working conditions for reporters, new storytelling methods can be exploited to raise public awareness on specific news stories (e.g., a conflict in a war zone, etc.) Extending the above, drone journalism could be the ideal tool for reporting physical disasters while delivering valuable civil protection informing services to the public (e.g., monitoring an earthquake or hurricane, traffic jam, etc.) Additional cases include environmental journalism, nature inspection, wildlife protection, and sports coverage.  
Future drone journalism services will be able to address numerous challenges that people are already facing. For instance, environmental issues and the better management of earth resources are considered very critical for the upcoming decades. Journalists and news media are obliged to inform people and to help them realize the actual situation as well as actions that should be taken. UAV surveillance allows for long-term environmental observation, which could be quite useful in the above directions. New technologies (i.e., multispectral imaging) will allow the monitoring of invisible changes, which can be conducted regularly. While the technology of multi-spectral vision is currently expensive, it is more than certain that such imaging tools will be commonly available in the not-so-far future.  
The proposed framework is in alignment with important worldwide initiatives, dedicated to establishing the ethical, educational and technological framework for this emerging field. People deserve to be properly informed and to be given further assistance on arising social, techno-economic, legal, and moral matters. Another positive impact is the implementation of smart systems and the acquisition of large-scale annotated content repositories, featuring common ground with far-reaching aims, such as the Semantic/Intelligent Web (Web 3.0/4.0) and the Internet of Things.  
The benefits of such a system may be numerous, but amateur and professional users must be careful when using devices that can record video and audio. Personal data should be respected by everyone and under all circumstances. Every day, people come before cameras that are intentionally or unintentionally pointing at them. Drones have a longer range, which means that footage that includes people should be automatically censored before being publicly broadcasted. Every action should be governed by journalistic ethics.  
Conceptualization, M.N. and C.D.; methodology, M.N. and M.E.S.; software, M.N.; validation, M.N. and C.D.; formal analysis, M.N., C.D and A.S.; investigation, M.E.S.; resources, C.D., A.S. and A.V.; data curation, C.D., A.S. and A.V.; writing--original draft preparation, M.N. and M.E.S.; writing--review and editing, C.D., A.S. and A.V.; visualization, M.N. and M.E.S.; supervision, C.D. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research received no external funding.  
Not applicable.  
All data that are not subjected to institutional restrictions are available through the links provided within the manuscript.  
The authors acknowledge the valuable contribution of Innews S.A. ([[https://www.innews.gr/](https://www.innews.gr/)]([https://www.innews.gr/](https://www.innews.gr/)), accessed on 9 November 2021) for providing us access to their repository with original indexed source data/articles that helped in proving the initial hypothesis. They also acknowledge Software Engineer [PERSON] for envisioning and setting up the system architecture design.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.