Next Generation Journalistic Norms: Journalism Students’ Social Imaginary of AI-Infused Journalism

This study examines journalism students’ social imaginaries of AI and journalism’s future in the era of AI. Drawing upon focus group sessions with journalism students, the findings illustrate the interplay between hope and fear about journalism’s future. From these sessions, we identified four frames—quality, productivity, engagement and economic—through which the impact of AI on journalism became visible. Within each frame, the imaginary constructed visions with both positive and negative impacts on journalistic norms and practices. On the one hand, AI was perceived to support journalism by enhancing productivity and the quality of journalism, boosting both audience engagement and revenue streams, leading to increased prosperity. On the other hand, in the imagined future of journalism, AI would profoundly harm journalistic norms and practices, potentially compromising the key journalistic norms of accuracy, authenticity, neutrality and transparency. These developments would diminish the public’s trust on journalism, eventually eroding societal cohesion. In the students’ imaginary, the safeguards for journalism—and for society at large—lay in maintaining journalism’s public service mission, adhering to journalistic norms, and ensuring that journalists retained control over AI-generated journalism.