Rachel Jang

Writing 101: Plagiarism Podcast

This writing project explores the ideas of plagiarism through an educational podcast. The

goal of this podcast is to summarize the ongoing discussion of plagiarism, its evolution, relieve

confusion, and what we can do to change the stigma around it. Plagiarism is a relevant issue in

academic writing and this podcast would be able to fix the misconceptions students have with it.

This may even be relevant to professional writing in the work field. Furthermore, a podcast not

only is a casual form of communication, but comes from three students. This perspective allows

the audience to feel more connected to the issue as if the podcast and the hosts were speaking on

their behalf. This casual form of information relaying is the most effective method as its casualty

promotes the idea of breaking down the fear and anxiety around plagiarism and it builds

emotional connection with the audience.

The writing process was inspired from the casual conversation of students. I imagined a

conversation with my friends and translated that into a more formal yet still casual conversation

about plagiarism. There were difficulties with incorporating the sources into the conversation

because of the awkwardness of its placement in the conversation mixed with the word maximum.

There were also difficulties with talking about plagiarism without overstepping boundaries. I

wanted to emphasize the faults in plagiarism as defined by our school system and society, but

not normalize it or justify it. Unfortunately, there is a gray area that can be misinterpreted by the

audience which opposes the real goal. Overall, there were bumps in the process, but through the

research of conversations and adding necessary details, my writing project was completed.
 Podcast Script

Cast: Person 1, Person 3

Person 1: Welcome back to the writing 101 podcast where we talk about anything and everything

about writing! Just a quick thank you to our listeners for always tuning to our show!

Person 3: Our podcast is biweekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays. We always discuss the latest topic

and debates about writing!

Person 1: Ok moving on, our first segment for today is…plagiarism. Ok so this is a more

sensitive topic.

Person 3: I remember in high school we had to put all our writing through plagiarism checkers.

Mine was called turnitin.com. I’m getting chills from even thinking about it…

Person 1: Oh yeah! I remember it would have to be around 80 percent no plagiarism for it to be

acceptable. I remember having to use really short quotes or even choose to paraphrase

instead of quoting because of that.

Person 3: And sometimes it would say I plagiarized when I literally didn’t. . Honestly it made me

super confused, I don’t even know what plagiarism is anymore.

Person 1: Honestly same, so we should turn to some sources. Let's look at what researchers and

professionals have said about it. Maybe we can find a reason why we and other students

have had this experience. .

Person 3: Okay okay, I have several articles here and I guess we can scan them as we go and see

how plagiarism has changed and what we can do. Ah! Here we have an article by Ardito.

It seems like Ardito is validating our experience. She says, “Over the years, documented

cases of plagiarism among notable newspaper reporters, broadcasters, poets, and

novelists have been reported.”(Ardito, 2002) but then she goes on to say that, “These
 "celebrities" escaped largely unscathed. Once the initial furor died down, all went on to

have successful careers” (Ardito, 2002).

Person 1: Wait, I feel so validated. I’m just a college student, but the fact that these famous

scholars have records but have been able to learn and grow past that makes me feel more

at ease.

Person 3: Yeah, there’s a lot less pressure because now it's a mistake everyone can make. It’s still

not good to plagiarize, but it just goes to show how even scholars can plagiarize. It kind

of shows how they unintentionally do it too. I mean we’re all just human after all.

Person 1: Wait, let’s get one point straight for our listener though: it’s never okay to plagiarize

intending to take credit for their work. We’re just discussing how there’s fault in the

definition. Plus, the way the educational system has made it difficult to understand

exactly what it is makes us fear it rather than understand it.

Person 3: Yes forsure, plagiarism is never ok, this just opens the discussion for what plagiarism

even is.

Person 1: Ok but what does plagiarizing even mean? Like I feel like we grew up having such a

bad stigma on the word that I don’t even know what it is anymore.

Person 3: Isn’t it just when you use someone else’s work without giving them credit? But I do

feel like it's more than that.

Person 1: Right, so we know that plagiarizing with the intent, emphasis on intent, of stealing

someone’s work is definitely not ok, but what about if it was unintentional? Like we

brought up before, we have experiences where we felt wrongly accused of plagiarism. .

Person 3: This is perfect timing to bring up an article that I’ve been eyeing. It's the one by

Edwards where they highlight a case just like ours where someone didn’t intend to
 plagiarize, but was criminalized. They said that, “intentionality is precisely what should

determine how we understand the students' process” (Edwards, 2003).

Person 1: That’s actually interesting because another article is stating the same thing. Ercegovac

and Richardson similarly state that many scholars have emphasized the idea of

intentionality in plagiarism (2004).

Person 3: So I guess we are justified in a way that plagiarism isn’t just copying someone’s work,

it’s about what intention we had with it. Additionally, Agwaral states that there are a

“variety of methods where duplicity or piracy can occur” (2020) for plagiarism so this

confirms the varied boundaries of the definition.

Person 1: I still think that there needs to be continuous debate because whether or not it was

intentional, their work is still being copied. The lines aren’t super clear.

Person 3: Well I guess it’s more about what plagiarism as a word has in terms of connotation and

applicability.

Person 1: Where was this definition when I was in school? I wouldn’t have copied anyone

regardless of intention, but it allows me to carry the word properly at least, but I guess

definitions like this are always changing. It’s just sad to see how little performative action

is taking place in schools though. Some of these articles have come out a long time ago,

yet there isn’t much change.

Person 3: Okay okay, enough negative talk, we need to tell the listeners what we can do to

prevent copying/plagiarism no matter the intention.

Person 1: Ok yeah I’ve been looking for an article that provides a solution, we can’t just be

sulking over the problem here. Luckily, I found one that jumpstarts that process of

change. Anson in his article states that, “ Instead of presenting citation policies as if they
 were like the laws of physics, teachers need to help students to acquire strategic forms of

knowledge that will allow them to quickly "read" a context” (2010). I do think it would

be useful for teachers to teach students that it’s not just some sort of no plagiarism

formula, but something that we can understand and avoid.

Person 3: To further this idea of a different teaching of plagiarism, apparently, writing outside of

your own style causes more plagiarism and “using alternative writing tasks and

developing rhetorical modes different from the argumentative mode to create a space for

writing that could be more reflective and expressive” (Abasi & Barbara, 2008).

Person 1: Wait so this is all aligning. To get the facts straight, the research is saying that students

that are forced to write outside of their writing style are more likely to plagiarize so

therefore students should try to find their own writing style.

Person 3: Right, and the people that can help us do this are our teachers which brings back what

you said about a switch in the academic guidelines from the teachers. I feel like this is

important because it calls for a whole reformation of what has been taught before and

that’s not really easy.

Person 1: I agree, big changes like this are going to be hard. But, I do think that hopefully people

understand what this change will mean. Our final source here by Wong outlines how

plagiarism goes against academic integrity and doesn’t help us in the long run with

integrity, professionalism, and more (2016). So basically, for the whole society it's a good

change.

Person 3: Yup, there are only good things that will happen, plus there won’t be students like us

who had to go through the anxiety of using turnitin.com. Gosh, I’m still getting chills

from that.
Person 1: I do think there needs to be more research done. I feel like in modern society, we lack a

lot of originality because it feels like everything has been done already. I feel like this can

be a good refresh to what we already know.

Person 3: Hopefully it’ll also help the young scholars out there better their writing and their

professional life…well, I guess that’s all we have to say for plagiarism. It’s everywhere,

but confusing and of course we still don’t even know what it really means.

Person 1: As the conversation continues and society progresses, we’ll be able to see what

happens.

Person 3: Well, that ends this segment about plagiarism, We’ll take a short ad break and we’ll be

right back!

Works Cited

Abasi, Ali R.; Barbara Graves. (2008). Academic literacy and plagiarism: Conversations with

international graduate students and disciplinary professors. Journal of English for

Academic Purposes 07.4, 221-233.

Agrawal. (2020). Plagiarism. Indian Journal of Pathology & Microbiology, 63(2), 175–176.

https://doi.org/10.4103/0377-4929.282724

Anson, Chris; Shawn Neely. (2010). The army and the academy as textual communities:

Exploring mismatches in the concepts of attribution, appropriation, and shared goals.

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 14.3.

Ardito, Stephanie C. (2002). Plagiarism, fabrication, and lack of attribution: The misuse of

information is pervasive and professionally challenging. Information Today 19

(July-August), 16-18.

Edwards. (2003). What a Tangled Web: Teachers, Students, and the Knot of Plagiarism in the

Postmodern Academy. Composition Studies, 31(2), 125–131.

Ercegovac, Zorana; John V. Richardson, Jr. (2004). Academic dishonesty, plagiarism included, in

the digital age: A literature review. College and Research Libraries 65.4, 301-318.

Wong, Lim, S. W. H., & Quinlan, K. M. (2016). Integrity in and Beyond Contemporary Higher

Education: What Does it Mean to University Students? Frontiers in Psychology, 7,

1094–1094. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01094