How U.S. and Chinese journalists think about plagiarism

ABSTRACT

A comparison of 1,096 professional journalists in China and the United States on attitudes toward attribution and plagiarism reveals Chinese journalists were more likely to see attribution as a practice to be embraced regardless of career longevity and culture, suggesting journalistic norms are more important than a collectivist orientation. Attribution was more likely to be embraced by those who see principles as more important than expediency, affirming research that plagiarism is hardly a monolithic concept. Overall, journalists in the two nations did not vary significantly in their attitudes toward plagiarism, despite vast differences in culture and politics as well as evidence that in some other fields China is more accepting of reusing material without attribution. The data show that among journalists, attitudes toward plagiarism are shared across national boundaries, reinforcing related research showing that a journalism culture exists and is shared at least in part across national boundaries.

KEYWORDS:

• Plagiarism
• attribution
• cultural differences
• journalism ethics
• cross-cultural comparison

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Norman P. Lewis, PhD (University of Maryland, 2007), is an associate professor in the College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, where he has taught since 2007. He has more than a quarter-century of professional experience, including The Washington Post. His academic research focuses on news culture and ethics.

Bu Zhong, PhD, (University of Maryland, 2006), is a visiting professor in the School of Journalism and Communication, South China University of Technology and associate professor in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, Pennsylvania State University. He used to be a journalist for China Daily and CNN for over a decade. His research focuses on studying how decision-making may be altered by information processing, especially, when media technology involved.

Fan Yang, PhD (Pennsylvania State University, 2017), is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication, University at Albany, SUNY. Her research focuses on the psychological effects of new communicative technologies, with a special focus on cognition. She is interested in examining individual information processing and decision making processes in the context of new media using methods such as survey, experiment, big-data analysis, and meta-data analysis.

Yong Zhou, PhD (Renmin University, 2008), is a professor in the School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China. His research focuses on visual communication, TV news reporting and news media ethics.