Plagiarism today - it’s the Internet’s fault.
By Zoe Ying
The Internet - holy land of sharing and re-use - leads us to believe we are entitled to use others’ ideas for free in the same way we use their videos and music. And that runs counter to the fundamental tenets of education.
T.S. Eliot is commonly attributed to the quote that “good writers borrow, great writers steal”. Somewhat ironically given the topic, this saying is a poor paraphrase of what he wrote in his essay “Phillip Massinger”, which reads: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” This is much richer in meaning; it implies that while thievery - the passing along of ideas from one work to another - is intrinsic in media, purpose must be found in theft, and new meaning should be added. A second-rate imitation of another’s work, as plagiarism is defined, is not worth the effort to consume.
However, the ease with which plagiarists can plagiarise depends on the accessibility of information and ideas, which depends on the inner principles of the prevalent communications medium of the time. As our culture progresses from speaking to writing to printing to posting, our definitions of knowledge and intelligence shift alongside it. Thus, the methods by which ideas are copied changes. In particular, the current speed of technological change means that plagiarism exists in a vastly different form than it did thirty years ago.
The character of the Internet medium - arguably the most important form of communication currently - has disseminated information so widely that plagiarism takes little effort. Prior to the Internet and word-processing software, the act of plagiarism was no less labour-intensive than creating original work, and thus, plagiarism was used primarily by the insecure to overcome weak writing abilities. Nowadays, the Internet has encouraged openness and sharing; students today are used to accessing music, films and videos easily, quickly and for free, and have come to expect the same of ideas and intellectual property. These tenets of the digital culture pose a danger to education, whose fundamental goal is to inspire, develop and express original thoughts.
Some may maintain that the Internet has also led to the advent of plagiarism-detection software, which compares student work against a database of websites, books and journals for copied content. Shouldn’t this act to deter plagiarism? Contrarily, it has only served to make plagiarism more subtle, though no less harmful. In the past, the risk of submitting plagiarised work was limited to if the educational institution recognised the original work. Direct copying was time-consuming, but the risk of being caught was low; today, it is the opposite.
Students today are typically cautious enough not to submit easily-detected, obviously fraudulent work. Instead, they “paraphrase” by replacing key words with synonyms, and fail to cite the origins of their ideas. This white paper from Wiley, a plagiarism-detection software, indicates that the most common type of plagiarism is from “rephrasing or rewriting an idea without citing its origin” (which is regarded as intellectual property theft), while verbatim copying is relatively rare. The great majority of students are not malicious, but simply uneducated on what constitutes plagiarism. When asked for their definitions of plagiarism, students around the school answered: plagiarism is the “theft of intellectual property”, or “fraud”, by “copying from a source without citing it”. Clearly, students understand the severity of stealing, but they are unclear of the difference between legitimate re-use and plagiarism.
To boil it down, if a reader assumes you originated an idea you did not, that is plagiarism. Rewriting a passage from a source entirely in your own words without citation is plagiarism. Borrowing phrases from a source without quotation is plagiarism. Big or small, plagiarism is still plagiarism, and whether due to ignorance, negligence, intention or accident, the plagiarist reaps the benefits and the plagiarised work is used without notice or consent.
But how can we, students and teachers, strengthen our safeguards against the vast umbrella of plagiarism? Educators must first inform their students: a huge majority are completely ignorant of their transgressions, though their lack of intent does not absolve their responsibility. Students, too, must learn to cite sources properly, and not use carelessness as an excuse for offenses. However, the best deterrent to plagiarism is communication. Students unclear of the boundaries between re-use and plagiarism should speak to teachers rather than risk their grades and academic reputations; equally, teachers should not rely on oft-crude checkers to police potential plagiarism. Ensure that students can articulate their ideas at the same level in a one-on-one conversation as in their assessments.
Ultimately, we want to encourage comprehension and originality in student work. Students and teachers must be aware of the subtleties of plagiarism in order to overcome it.
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