Academic Plagiarism, Intellectual Property and WhatsApp Messaging-Where Do the Lines Cross?

Abstract

The ubiquity of the internet, lavish content and adeptness of social-media applications arouses issues of social media plagiarism, where lines cross in WhatsApp messaging and academic plagiarism. Plagiarism and copyright infringement have a variety of implication for scholars. While there are plagiarism checkers like Turnitin, it cannot decipher an original message extracted from the WhatsApp status update or broadcast message. Hence the relevance of this textual and discourse analysis. The paper concludes that WhatsApp plagiarism can be mitigated by user exercising strength-of-character (virtue) and discretion in updates. Also, the government providing enabling environment via policies, in the interest of good scholarship.