Plagarism

As I learned over the years, plagiarism is taking credit for any work that is not yours, whether it is text or ideas. If you get information from anywhere without citing your source or giving the original author credit, then you are engaging in plagiarism.

Valdosta State University has put together a very helpful student hand guide on the different types of plagiarism. A few of the most common, according to VSU, are: Copy and paste, word switch, and idea.

Copy and paste- is taking text word for word from a source and not mentioning the author at all. You can do this only if you put the text in quotations and cite where you that information from.

Word Switch- is when you take a sentence from a source and only change around a few words. Even though the text is not verbatim it is still plagiarism. Again, you have to put the text in quotation and cite the source. (Barnbaum)

Idea- is using somebody else's creative ideas as your own. General knowledge which everybody is expected to know does not have to be cited, but when the author expresses new ideas or a solution to a problem  you have to give that person credit. (Barnbaum)



Barnbaum, D. C. (n.d.). Plagiarism a student's guide to recognizing it and avoiding it. Retrieved from http://ww2.valdosta.edu/~cbarnbau/personal/teaching_MISC/plagiarism.htm

Rhetorical Device

Whether we know it or not, everyday commercials often use rhetorical devices to try and persuade an audience. Probably one of the most popular example of these commercials are the ones for Proactive. While watching one of these commercials featuring Lindsey Lohnan I noticed the use of appeal to nature, appeal to emotion, and anecdotal devices. Appeal to nature is used when the add claims that the product is natural and has no harsh chemicals that can harm your skin. Appeal to emotion is used throughout the entire commercial when different individuals talk about how insecure and unattractive they felt due to their acne. These individuals claimed that Proactive help them gain more self esteem. This device is used to trigger your emotions so that you can buy the product and feel pretty and confident. The last device used was anecdotal.  Lindsay talks about her brother, who is not a celebrity and how he “went through a phase where he had acne” which relates to everyday teens. This device is used to show a personal experience in which  the product worked instead of making a valid argument. These devices work together to try and persuade you that you need this product to feel better about yourself. By appealing to your emotions, nature, and using person experiences, Proactive captures your attention rather than making any valid points.

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Research Questionhe

When we first started the research process, my focus was going to be on the similarities and differences between piracy in the film and music industries. After doing some presearching and actually finding relevant articles, I found that doing a compare and contrast was going to be too broad of a topic. It also left no way for an argument. So I decided to start from scratch and come up with a new research question. The new question I came up with is "Should the government legalize media piracy?" I think this is a better question because it has different viewpoints and gives room for an argument. In my opinion, I believe that even though media piracy is so common and easy to do, stealing is still a crime and those who are guilty should be held accountable . I found many articles on why people commit piracy and how it has affected the government as well as the artists. What I need to do now is find more sources about how piracy has negatively affected artist, and build my argument from there. I want to be able to prove that piracy is a huge crime which should not be legalized.
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major discipline in GALILEO

My major discipline of interest falls under the medicine and health database. I have never looked under this database before so I was very pleased when I found the dentistry sub-field. Since I plan to become a dentist I was very interested as to what I would find under this tab. As i continued my search, I was a little stuck. I was brought to a page with several different databases including academic search complete and proquest. I decided then to search "dental school criteria" as my keywords to see what information I could obtain. After doing this, I saw several articles talking about specific requirements for admissions into dental school. I believe the results I got were very accurate. I got exactly what i was looking for without any difficultly at all. When I searched using the discovery tool, I received way more results, some of which seemed a little off topic to me. The subject specific database gave me more accurate results than the discovery tool did. These search engines will be useful to me when I start to look for resources for my research paper. I believe I will find alot of useful articles related to my topic under the specific subject database.

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What is GALILEO

GALILEO is pretty much all of the libraries in the state of Georgia combined into an online website. It actually stands for Georgia Library Learning Online. It organizes information just how the physical library does. It contains books, articles, videos ect. which all have their specific place. When searching for a book on GALILEO, you can type in the specific book, are just a general topic, example history books on WW1. GALILEO will give the title of the book as well as the call number  which allows you find your book on the shelf inside of the library. Another way you can think about how the information is organized is through the use of databases. A database is a is a collection of information organized to provide efficient retrieval. For example, when researching for something through the site you have the option to narrow down what you are looking for. They have a certain information based on History, Science, Medial, Education, Social ect. Within these databases are books, articles and other forms of resources relevant to your topic. Databases are important because it organize the information, and narrows down the search for you. This way you dont have to spend a long amount of time searching to sources directly related to your topic. 
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two articles (*one scholarly, one popular*) related to your topic.

My scholarly article which I found using Galileo and databases is entitled, It won’t happen to me: An assessment of optimism bias in music piracy, written by Ankur Nandedkar and Vishal Midha. This academic article is about how piracy continues to be a threat to the global economy. The authors attempt to explain this paradox by using the concept of optimism bias. Results of structural equation modeling using a sample of 219 college students provide evidence that individuals having an optimism bias engage in piracy because they consider themselves to be at lower risk than average compared to a group. Implications for practice and future research avenues are discussed. I can use this in my research as evidence for why people commit this crime.  I can also use specific statistics from the study to back my claims. The second article which is a popular article is found in Time Magazine. The article is titled, The Battle Over Music piracy by Lev Grossman. It discusses how the website Amazon plans to set up a online music store which pretty much gives away free music, unlike iTunes which requires you to pay per song. The article talks about how free music could be critical for these sites that depend on an income. I could use this article along with my others, to show how piracy of the media is taking over. Facts and statistics from this source can also be used.


Ankur, N., & Vishal, M. (n.d). It won’t happen to me: An assessment of optimism bias in music piracy. Computers In Human Behavior,2841-48. doi:10.1016/j.chb.

Grossman, Lev, "The Battle Over Music" Time Magazine 24 May. 2007. 20-21 Print.

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