Month: February 2019

‘Research in Action’ at CMA’s New York Conference

The College Media Association will host its first annual undergraduate research panel at the CMA Spring Convention in New York this year. “Research in Action” will feature students from three universities who will present their works and compete for CMA’s first Apple Award in Undergraduate Research.

Cheyenne Mathews, from University of Alaska Anchorage, will present “Media Literacy Education in Alaskan Schools: A Content Analysis of Alaskan School Districts’ Curriculum.” This content analysis examines media literacy instruction and the role of journalism offerings in the largest Alaskan school districts.

Brandon Liemer, from Florida Atlantic University, will speak on “The Podcast Era: Emerging New Media to Enhance Academia.” His study explores the use of podcasts as a new, emerging and contemporary form of media. He employs survey research to examine student interest in podcasting and the possibility of including it in communication curricula.

Valerie Miller and Henry Tasker are from Virginia Wesleyan University. They will co-present “Digital Deception: Examining Source Credibility and Native Advertising in Online News Editorials.” This experiment assesses college students’ ability to identify native advertising and corresponding media literacy and source credibility levels.

The session, at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 7, in Marquis B of the New York Marriott Marquis, will include Kelly Messinger from Capital University as the panel moderator. Elizabeth Smith from Pepperdine University will serve as the discussant.

Is plagiarism a problem? Is there a solution?

By Carolyn Schurr Levin
with the research assistance of Paola Guzman

Introduction

The article raised red flags immediately. The topic was studying tips for final exams. The student writers on the staff love pitching this type of “list” assignment. The stories do not entail a lot of investigative reporting and are relatively easy to write. The school newspaper [1] publishes them routinely. But, this one didn’t sound right to the faculty adviser, when she read it as part of her weekly newspaper laboratory course [2]. The story included sentences like, “Leave yourself ample time.” The adviser’s students simply did not use the word “ample.” So, she plugged the story into a free online plagiarism checker, something that she does not routinely do when she reads stories written by the students in her class. Within minutes, she found the blog post that the story was copied from, essentially verbatim.

The adviser emailed the student, a senior broadcasting major poised to graduate from college in a mere few weeks, and asked her to stop by the adviser’s office before class the following morning. The student inquired in her email response about the purpose of the meeting. The adviser told her that she had some concerns about the story submitted that week.

The adviser and the student met the next morning in the adviser’s office. The adviser showed the student her story, side-by-side with the blog from which it had been copied, with the identical paragraphs highlighted in yellow. The student looked at both, wide eyed, and said unflinchingly, “We can’t do that?”[3]

Continue reading “Research (Vol. 56) Plagiarism in College Media”