What prompts students to plagiarize: Google infrastructure or convenience?
In this article, we consider one of the possible sources of student plagiarism, the information seeking behavior. We examine in detail the impact of ordinary Google’s informatics and information infrastructure on two of the critical activities that students should undertake to avoid plagiarism, scientific literature exploration and differentiation of the status of sources. We hypothesize that oversimplified access to information sources, combined with exposure to sources that are not all selective, prevents information research from playing its role in students’ appropriation of theorizations. Paraphrasing the latter, i.e. reformulating them by clarifying them, a major “anti-plagiarism” skill, then becomes difficult. Thereafter, we confront this techno-information perspective with other frameworks that explain the massive use of ordinary Google by students, particularly that of “convenience.”