Social Impact

how your use of ai affects communities, jobs and society

AI use reaches beyond the newsroom into jobs, communities, and public life. This card is about how your choices affect staff, the people you cover, and society more broadly. A team pauses here to look past the workflow at the wider effects of what it does.

Questions to explore

// use these as prompts in a workshop or on your own. There are no right answers.

How does your use of AI affect the jobs and roles inside your newsroom?
What effect could your AI choices have on the communities you cover?
Where might efficiency from AI come at a cost to people you do not immediately see?
How does your AI use affect public trust in journalism more broadly?
What responsibility do you carry for the wider effects of the tools you adopt?

Expert voices

// notes from the journalists and AI experts who helped shape this kit

“Have the honest conversation about how AI affects journalism jobs: which roles change, which are at risk, and what new opportunities emerge.”

Lynn Khellaf, DW

“Generative AI could create a two-tier society: free AI slop disguised as information for those who cannot pay, and high-quality human journalism behind paywalls for elites.”

Olaya Argüeso Pérez, Freelance AI Trainer

Things to consider

Gains inside the newsroom can shift costs onto people outside it.
The communities you cover have a stake in how you use AI.
Public trust in journalism is shared, so one newsroom's choices touch others.

using this card

Pull Social Impact when it is relevant and set it aside when it is not. Pair it with the other AI Conversations cards, lay them out on a table, and use the questions above to get everyone on the same page. Capture what you discuss on sticky notes or in a shared doc.